


Born Whole

by Dunamis



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Beta Read, Partial Soulbond, Pining, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Soulmates Share Dreams, because I write at 3am, i've accepted this has taken over the wordcount, sometimes, there i said it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-06-23 08:59:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 140,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15602886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dunamis/pseuds/Dunamis
Summary: Rook knows his soulmates can't hear him, can't see him in dreams like they're supposed to, have already found each other and closed the circuit that should have had him in it. He knows.But then again,Fuck the bliss.





	1. bites

Fuck the bliss.

 

 

Rook learned how to dream the same way everyone else did. A woman with a soft voice came to school and they sat with their legs crossed and closed their eyes and she told them there was someone waiting so they had to listen to very closely. They had to listen every night, and think very hard, because that someone was waiting for them to hear them, and in the end, their dreams would connect and they could speak.

To their soulmate.

Rook went home and listened hard. He didn’t hear a voice. He fell asleep listening and woke up listening and no one said anything.

But lucid dreaming took time, sometimes took years to learn properly. Reaching out to another person could take even longer. The counsellor said it to Rook, just one in the dozens she saw every year, sniffling and afraid that he had done something wrong. That it was his fault. That he just couldn’t _hear_ them. She said it to him and Ashleigh after him, Hayley after that, and so on and so on until finally Tyler Paul heard his soulmate and came in to tell everyone.

Rook sat and he listened to Tyler, and he listened to the next child, and in the end he had listen to Tyler and Ashleigh and Hayley after that, all of them, and then he was a teenager with too-long arms and legs and the counsellor gave him a very different look.

No one spoke to him in his dreams, he told her. He could move, he could shape his world there. He could scream himself hoarse and sit in silence for hours, for hundreds of nights now just sitting in the dark and waiting, and no one ever came. Sometimes he thought he heard someone, but it was like sitting in an empty room. Your brain could invent noise when it didn’t find any. And sometimes, the worst times, he couldn’t control anything at all and he was just locked inside and beating his fists against a wall, dim figures passing by on the other side that couldn’t see or hear him, and he had learned to dream the same way as everyone else but he had learned nightmares all on his own.

The counsellor tapped her pen on the desk for a long time, and he sat there and felt every inch of the chair too small for him, with his too-long arms and his too-long legs and she said, “don’t worry, it’s just to make sure,” and she wrote a note for him to take home for his mother.

 

 

The doctor’s office smelt bitter. Rook was too big for the chairs there too. He let his mother hold his hand the way she hadn’t in years.

 

 

He tells his doctor about it, and his mother looks like it’s the first time she’s hearing any of it. Like being in a room with colourful posters of human anatomy and _Soulmate Facts!_ gave her brand new ears to hear him with, while he talked about the darkness and the silence and the nightmares over and over and _over_ until he’d spoken it in every angle he could and some he’d never thought of, making complicated something that seemed pretty simple to him.

Nothing. There was nothing there and no one waiting for him. It seemed so simple. It was so simple it was catchy and he heard it all the time, still listening like he’d learned – nothing there, no one waiting.

The doctor didn’t think it was simple. He asked about the nightmares, which were horrible but even simpler, and then he folded his hands in front of him and he stopped asking, and he took a thin machine in hand and swiped something over Rook’s neck that made it burn, then freeze, and then burn again. Two pinpricks of pain that turned to piercing. It lasted for too long but the doctor looked at it for even longer, and he’d already stopped asking so all he could do was start telling.

 

 

Nightmares.

Rook thought he could still call them that, if the people passing by while he screamed were the people he’d been meant to listen for, to see, who’d never thought to look for him. The people not looking because they had already found each other first.

 

 

“It’s more common with multi-bonds,” the doctor told his mother and sort of Rook, whose chair put him below comfortable eye level. He talked more, about connections, shared trauma, odds and probability and Rook listened. He heard,

two or more,

and he heard,

permanent,

and he heard his mother start crying in the driver’s seat when they got back to the car. Hand wrapped around the key in the ignition and muffled sobbing with her forehead pressed against the steering wheel between her hands. Rook looked down at his because he was still holding something:

_Born Whole: Mateless_

and the pamphlet was yellow on the outside because it knew damn well it wasn’t happy inside.

 

 

 

The marks from the machine – the two dots under his ear – were known as Bites, and it was an easy way of identifying people like Rook. Whose soulmates didn’t exist, didn’t make it, didn’t call out for them. Who died young. Who stopped looking. The machine itself didn’t cause problems, but there was a zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-one percent positive result for the tests. The second the machine wheeled in, you knew those were your odds. One in a million that you had a soulmate who wanted you.

You knew. And once the machine sunk its needles in, so did everyone else. You had the Bites, and nothing else. No one else.

Pretty fucking simple.

 

 

 

His hometown was full of people who meant well – had the charity runs every month for the church down the road, stopped by to fix a neighbour’s fence, fed your dog when you were away – but they didn’t know what to do with someone like him, and they all knew so fast what “someone like him” meant. He didn’t know how. Maybe his mother, maybe the receptionist, maybe the counsellor, but the meant-well hometown people thing meant the half-wasted fuckboy who came up to him one party in the parking lot, after school, and jabbed at his bites, well his big brother heard the day after and gave him such a beating that the kid turned up the next day and apologised in front of everyone. Eye black as sin and holding his arm funny, because everyone knew his big brother’s soulmate had died when they were just kids and felt it every day.

He wasn’t the last person to try it, though, and not everyone had a big brother willing to put them in their place. Rook acquired a nasty scar along his hairline when he was seventeen from a fight behind the video store, where Davey would sell weed to the college kids back home from break and didn’t really give a shit about what else went down, and everyone knew who did it. The sheriff sat him down and asked him who it was, though he knew too, and Rook was grateful for the asking even when he couldn’t say a thing. He stopped going to the parties, stopped hanging out behind the video store, and people gave him grief for that instead because it earnt them less looks than picking on the Bitten kid.

Well, they gave him grief for as long as they could and Rook didn’t stop listening. He’d gotten used to being quiet, being hungry for someone to speak, and knowing they weren’t coming wasn’t going to change years of habit. He was quiet and his too-long arms and his too-long legs kept growing until he wasn’t too-long, he was just too-big, and he learned people were a lot less ready to call you Bitten and Mateless and _unwanted_ when you stood up, and up, and up. He wasn’t shy but he didn’t have a lot to say because he’d been saving words for someone else and by himself it hadn’t seemed important afterwards. People listened when he spoke, though, like saving them up made them stronger.

Rook got stronger. It didn’t help when he was beating against the walls of his nightmares, when he couldn’t wake himself up, and people who should have been his passed along it without ever knowing he was there. Faceless and muffled and Not _For Him_.

It helped him get onto the baseball team, though. When God closed a door, as the saying went.

Though Rook knew damn well he was too big to go climbing through windows.

 

 

 

He had sort of thought in college, where there were other people like him with the marks, with the brand on them that screamed “up for grabs” that they’d gravitate towards each other, but the first girl who did almost sent a professor flying when she turned to get away from him as fast as she could. His buddy Ashleigh, who’d come with him to college just because he’d never known what to do with himself, tried to explain it and all he came up with was, “it’d look weird if you all grouped together, wouldn’t it?” and Rook just looked at him, the silence ringing in his ears, and something on his face made Ashleigh go pale.

He called his soulmate from the dorm common room after that. The two of them a perfect set, grouped together by their dreams and not by loneliness, like that was better.

Only it sort of was better, so Rook left the other girl alone, and the one after that, and he made friends who didn’t care about the Bites and said they’d stay in touch when he went home, only he didn’t, and only some of them did. He went to parties again and he showed up for eight a.m. classes with the kind of dogged, bleary determination he’d learned from every morning after a nightmare, and then he ate the wrong goddamn brownie at the wrong goddamn party and went home and was sick until he felt as empty on the inside as Hollywood said all Bitten were, and when he fell asleep, he saw the dim figures moving past him again, two of them, and he was too tired to scream.

So he pressed his forehead to the wall, and someone pushed him _hard._

Rook caught sight of a man, shorter than him but blurred around the edges like everyone in dreams, faceless, the silence of the dream shattered by the hard-sharp noise echoing around them. The muffled noise from the other side of the wall times ten, times a hundred. He jerked back convulsively before the man leaned in and shoved him down, landing on a hard floor with tooth-jarring pain. Edges of realness seeping in – this hurts, this doesn’t, this is what you know is not yours – and his weight settled on Rook’s hips before he could move away. Rook reached up to catch his hand before the man could lower it and the ambient incoherent noise got louder, higher, sharper in his ears just as the man reached in with his left hand instead and started pressing.

His fingers were skittering too much and digging in too hard when he could even keep them steady, dragging down Rook’s chest in lines.

Letters, Rook realised, the walls of the dream coming screaming down around him, and he woke up with his hand on his chest. He tried to mimic it, to follow the lines drawn through him but there was nothing to trace, no physical memory to help. It had all been in his head, because that’s all dreams were.

 

 

 

He woke up with blood crusted down his face when it had poured from his nose, and he went back to the doctor and stood in the waiting room, because there was no way he’d risk the chairs five years and a foot of height later.

The doctor frowned when he told him about the dream and rubbed his face at the part about the brownie ( _marijuana_ , he corrected when Rook said _weed_ ) and he’d told him, he said, he’d warned him. About how drugs and alcohol and near-death could force a connection, just briefly, and how many Mateless would try and fail and die just to feel it once. How rarely it worked, and Rook had gotten lucky and got it first try. Rook listened, the hope in his mouth going sour and his eyes getting hotter and he listened, and he heard,

it’s just not safe,

and he heard,

dream suppressants,

because a one-way bond could hurt you but a broken bond would drive you mad. The bond between their minds couldn’t be risked because it would never be whole, the doctor told him, and he crossed the room to hold his hands before Rook realised they were shaking. He smelled like medicine up close, the bitter kind that reminded you the kind of poison it could be. He’d have to take dream suppressants and they would help him sleep, would stop the nightmares, in case one of the others came through again and hurt him on purpose, rejecting him the way the first one had. Or worse, in case they wanted him, and it tore his mind apart because that wasn’t how it worked.

“He was screaming,” Rook told him, because he was pretty sure the man had been. The doctor nodded like he’d been expecting it and any of this was _to be expected_ and maybe should have been covered in the goddamn pamphlet, and he wrote him a prescription.

 

 

Rook didn’t take them. The pill case was massive, enough to last, and he put them on his tiny dorm-room dresser and he went to sleep the way he always did. He went to sleep listening, and he woke up in the dark and the wall was there again, but all three shapes were on the other side. Three at most, three to sometimes sleep at once, he knew that now, and not a single one there for him. He sat and he watched and he listened to them speak to each other as one faded in and out – restless sleeper – and he could make out the hard-sharp of the one who’d pushed him, scrawled words into his chest and now forever out of reach again.

Rook named him Needles, for his sharp fingers and the shrill noise that hung in his ears for days afterwards. Sometimes he could make him out, through the wall he felt so impregnable between him and the others. Needles, not born but made whole and screaming. He named him to own him just a little because he’d been made for him, he’d been made for them, and he closed his eyes and woke up.

The first time was at four a.m., and he took the goddamn pill.

 

 

He didn’t move back home after college. He didn’t see much point.

 

 

Rook sort of floundered a bit, trying to find something to do with himself. At that size, floundering could be awkward so he didn’t do it for long. He wracked his brain and he took his pills and he took part-time jobs in construction and security for the year after he graduated, trying to see where he fit in and knowing he’d need a lot of space. He took a gig as a bouncer for a friend trying his luck as a bartender, just a favour to cover a shift, and on his fifteen-minute break he came back and some asshole had spiked his drink with something that tasted like colours and hit him like a train. He woke up in the manager’s office with the taste of blood and sand in the back of his throat, nothing but impressions of hands and angryangry _angry_ , another temporary failure between him and a soulmate that would be gone the next day like it had never been, so he named his second soulmate Knife and didn’t come back for his second shift.

He’d be the sheriff, he decided instead. He’d be the sheriff who’d asked, and there was only one way to get there.

He went through the academy, he took a job in Hope County, and man;

 

Fuck the bliss.

 

 

-

 

 

The first time Rook saw the Seeds was the second day he was getting dragged around to all his new old friends, which was basically everyone within a ten-mile radius of the police station, just to start. Officer Nancy, who was dark-haired and so pregnant he got sympathy back pain just from standing near her, chatted loudly about moving to dispatch duty when she got the chance and she took him around door-to-door with the kind of ruthless efficiency that made the police academy look like a daycare. She had to be taking three steps for every one of his but she was somehow always the first one up the path to the door, checking in on damn near everyone. “Have you met Deputy Rook?” she asked, after four minutes of catching up at blinding speed. “He’s just started down at the station with us – I know, I _know_ , what’s the weather like up there – he’s such a sweetie, though, I promise you you’re in good hands – how _is_ Sarah, how’s the baby,” and hell, Rook might have finally met his match because if he could listen, Nancy could _talk_.

She took one look at him when they got back in the squad car – his seat jammed as far back as it would go – and laughed. “Don’t worry, honey,” she told him. “It won’t always be like this. Just try and keep up for now and then you can take it at your own speed, okay?”

Rook nodded with a whole new sympathy for deer in headlights. “I think I can do that,” he said, and Nancy gave a quick giggle like she did every time he spoke because apparently he had a deeper voice than she expected, but golly, what had she expected from a man that big, honey, they’d had to order new uniforms special and what were they feeding him down in –

Rook shook his head and slid his sunglasses on. He’d be hearing her voice in his dreams if he still had any. “Where to next?”

Nancy unhooked the radio and lifted it to her mouth. “We’re just about done showing Rook the sights around this neighbourhood today. Got anything for me, Staci-Lacey?” she asked.

Rook was pretty sure that wasn’t how you were meant to talk on the radio, but he was also pretty sure Staci was the tired-looking guy around his age back at the station who wouldn’t have stood a chance against Nancy on his best day. The radio crackled to life a few seconds later. “This is Officer Pratt, full name _Staci Pratt as you know damn well,_ Nancy - Drubman Senior’s kicking up a fuss about the church again. Seed’s, not Jerome’s.”

Nancy tsked. “He’s a loud one. He’s not hurting anybody, right?”

“He says they’re brainwashing his constituents, Nance, he’s parked out front of their building and he’s got the megaphone again.”

Rook looked out the window, only half-listening. A woman was crossing the road with four terriers on leads and a cell phone in her other hand, which was sort of impressive.

“I hear you. We’ll go talk him down, over and out.” Nancy tucked the radio back and started the car. “Well, Deputy, ready for your first unhappy citizen?” she asked.

Rook nodded, rolling his window back up; Hudson had warned him about the bugs on the open road, assuming he was a city boy. “Let’s do it.”

She smiled at him, all dimples and laugh lines. “You keep that cheer,” she advised, steering them out to the main road with one hand on the wheel and the other on the automatic gear shift like she was used to a manual. “You’ll need it if he really has found that darn megaphone again.”

She updated him on Hurk Drubman Senior as they drove. It was a short trip, but apparently he wasn’t a complicated man. He’d decided to run for office and that Eden’s Gate, the local evangelical Christian mob, would be his main support. Which had worked great until the preacher ( _Joseph Seed, he seems nice but his hair is really too long, you’ll see what I mean when we get there and it’s a shame because he’s handsome you know, not that I should talk that way about a priest_ ) had actually heard about it and broken the news to him, which Drubman had taken about as well as jilted exes the world over. He’d decided to wage war on the Seeds, particularly Joseph and the youngest, John ( _he’s a smooth talker if I ever heard one, some kind of fancy lawyer type and it shows, you watch out for that bright smile Rook, he’ll eat you up in a flash_ ) who were the interlopers. Or possibly just because the oldest, Jacob ( _now he’s a mean looking one – not that I mean the scars, of course I don’t mean that, I’m not like that you know and you can’t judge a book and all – just he’s got those cold eyes and he’s a big one, like you_ ) was too intimidating for him to try it on with. The sister, Faith ( _beautiful, beautiful girl but so much younger, so odd, very gentle though and you would not believe her singing voice, she has the voice of an angel I swear to god)_ didn’t seem to register for him, though that could have been because she was the youngest sibling and had three brothers Drubman didn’t want to anger all in one go.

Rook absorbed it all while he looked out the window, at the snow-capped mountains and the forests, the river he could sometimes see between the trees. The sort of thing people bought postcards of, took photos to remember. Nancy never slowed down beside him or actually _at all on the road_ , he realised when he paid attention and ended up bracing himself against the door the whole way.

He lunged out of the car when they finally stopped in front of the white-painted wooden church, a quaint little thing with high pointed roofs and enormous tree next to it, casting shade over the people clustered outside and leaning over the river beside it. He took deep breaths and counted to ten.

Nancy couldn’t be stopped. Not by silence or road rules, _fuck_.

The idyllic calm of the scene was shattered by the loud boom of a megaphone. “These looney toons are tryin’ to trick you!” a man yelled into it, wearing a denim vest over a polo shirt, a moustache and a red, enraged colour. “Joseph Seed and his brothers are steering you away from the truest cause – making this county great! Makin’ Hope great again!”

Nancy caught Rook’s eye and jerked her heard towards Drubman Senior – he had a keen eye, he knew a man who shouldn’t have access to a megaphone when he saw one – and started walking towards him. The worshippers, a sort of odd mix of people he hadn’t seen around town yet, quickly parted around them and skulked back to a wary distance from the yelling to stick near the tree, the church next to it.

Drubman paused when he caught sight of Nancy just for a second, lifting the megaphone to address her like she wasn’t ten feet away and then lowering it again quickly when he saw Rook coming up behind _her_. This part, Rook got. Nancy started in on what was a very practised dressing down, hands folded across her chest and her voice even louder while Rook observed the people around them and kept half an ear on the conversation.

They were reluctant to meet his eye for the most part. Rook was pretty used to that even before he became a cop, but people in Hope County seemed friendly so it felt off. Then again, he didn’t care for religion. A lot of them had longer hair, even the men, and he was checking for it before he let himself know he was doing it.

Bites. So many of them had Bites.

They started gravitating towards the church doors after a moment. To the three men and the woman there who were barely outside enough to see. The Seeds, he had to assume. The woman was most visible with her long black hair and her bright white dress and she was beautiful, actually, so Nancy had been right. She was beautiful and her hair was pulled to one side of her neck to show the Bites tattooed darker into the skin there, surrounded by delicate flowers that just made the scars more ugly and harsh.

Rook didn’t touch his, but they itched.

The men watched him. Jacob had to be the scarred one, red-haired and tall, broad, burn scars across his face and arms. He dressed like he was going to a military exercise after church and it made Rook want to smile, especially when the smiling and handsome, dark-haired man next to him was neatly dressed in business casual. Business casual after a few drinks, actually, and Rook had never thought to unbutton his shirt so much when he was going to church even back when he did.

The third man was watching him already when Rook looked at him. Even behind the yellow sunglasses his eyes were too sharp, hair pulled back into a tight bun and beard closely cut. His white shirt and black vest were the image of preachers Rook hadn’t realised he’d held somewhere in his brain, along with the rosary dangling from where it was wrapped around his hand.

Something in his eyes was too sharp, he thought again, and he looked away back to Nancy and Drubman. She was already wrapping up and Rook automatically stepped in to take the megaphone when she pointed to it, lifting it to sit on his shoulder safely out of reach. Drubman stormed back to his sort of magnificently hideous souped-up car and Nancy touched Rook’s arm to get his attention.

“Honey, my sister’s here and I’m due for my break, mind waiting for me back at the station? She can give me a lift back.”

Rook didn’t let himself frown, but it was close. “Are you sure?” he asked, ignoring the giggle. “What if they need you?”

Nancy rubbed her stomach meaningfully. Maybe that was just him. Maybe he sort of expected all pregnant-stomach-rubs to be made meaningfully in some way. “If they need me so bad, I promise things are too dire for me to help. I’ll see you in an hour, okay?”

Rook nodded and took the keys from her. Not policy, but then again, it was Hope County that people made postcards of, where everyone knew each other’s names, and Nancy didn’t seem to want to get him in trouble. He made his way back to the car and checked the church doors in his rearview before he left.

The Seeds had gone back inside, but he thought it again.

Something there was too sharp, he thought, and he drove back to town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No YOU are so desperate for more Far Cry 5 fic that you're writing it.


	2. snare-stillness

It was Staci Pratt after all, the tired young man back at the office. He was also the one Rook discovered could cuss a man out in three languages, kept a bottle of hotsauce in his squad car and had an on-again off-again with hairbrushes. He took to Rook fast just because Rook could call a man “Staci” with a straight face, ending with an i and all, when Hudson still wouldn’t. And Josephine “Joey” Hudson was another pretty one again – something in the water, Nancy had whispered, giving him a meaningful look behind Joey’s back – and Rook had fallen into a helpless kind of crush when she’d yanked a pool cue out of the mess of a bar brawl and taken out a man’s knees with it on his fifth night shift (second bar brawl). He couldn’t help it and didn’t really need to. Meaningful aptitude did something for him, and he didn’t want anything to come of it anyway. Just sort of wanted to wind her up and watch her go.

All in all, the job wasn’t as quiet as he thought it would be. People were spread out onto their different properties across the huge county but miles apart or not, the people called themselves a small town and small towns had a way of heating up in the same spots, over and over. Like how the Spread Eagle had a fight every three nights or every time Mary May wore that one tank top with the lips on it, how Eli Palmer would file a complaint against Jacob Seed every Thursday. How Sam Bowman beat his wife bloody every other week and she always said he hadn’t, no matter how nice they asked or how long Nancy talked to her by the squad cars. The same spots, over and over, Sam on the porch and Jessie down by the squad cars with her eyes on the ground and a cigarette she was holding more than smoking, the Bites under her ear that her husband didn’t have.

Rook did suppose catching a coworker luring a wolverine into a wife-beater’s car was more strictly a rural Montana problem, but Staci had given it up the second Rook had walked up, like he’d been caught before. As he got used to things, started learning the rhythms of the county, Nancy came out less and less. She didn’t have a husband to look after her and stayed with her sister when the baby decided it was more entitled to her energy than she was, born or not, and the old ladies stuck to the town bus stop to stickybeak would stop talking when she went by because some things were the same, each small town over. She stayed cheerful through it and sort of cheerfully menaced her way to maternity leave, pointing to things on low shelves just so Rook would bend down for her and blush.

He didn’t see the Seeds much. Joey gave John a speeding ticket in the same spot every day for a week before he bought whatever property was at the end of that road and moved on to the next, buying up land like it was running out, but the others seemed more interested in obeying road rules and didn’t send Joey into a hissing rage like he did. Joseph hosted a barbecue every Sunday, went around to the bad houses with ( _we don’t associate with_ ) Those Kinds of People in it, like the old ladies would say, and he took some of his worshippers and they did odd jobs for free with the kind of manic enthusiasm Rook always associated with thinking there was a heaven to lose out on. He always nodded when he saw Rook or the other officers and he didn’t blink much, that Joseph. Didn’t miss much either and Rook did try to work out how the man had learnt his name when he greeted him in passing on the street one day, but never did.

He had a strange voice. Not bad to hear, steady and southern, but always with too much space in it, weight in it. Pitched for a church that didn’t happen to be the street Rook and he crossed paths on, but like his words were headed there anyway. Vaunted like it was heading for god and not Rook, all the way up there nonetheless.

Rook tried not to think about it but did. It wasn’t bad to hear, after all. There were more followers than he expected, though, because Joseph’s helpers were never the same ones twice, and for all he knew they didn’t group together like he’d once thought they did, he started getting used to seeing Bites around. Touched his own a little less.

 

 

 

 

It was a Friday morning when Rook made his way up the winding road up to the veteran’s hospital in the Whitetails, windows rolled down, Joey cleaning her nails with a knife in front and the radio playing something acoustic, catchy and probably more religious than he’d pick given the choice. A Friday following a Thursday, as was the usual rule, which in Hope County meant following up the complaint Eli Palmer had submitted the night before about Jacob Seed (Jacob _Motherfucking_ Seed in red pen on the form – all uppercase) and how he had too many guns. Hearing that from a man like Eli Palmer meant taking a look because he’d once taken a crossbow to the movies and had the Second Amendment in embroidery framed on his living room wall. In his doomsday bunker, no less. So Rook had volunteered because he hadn’t gotten up to the Whitetails much but he liked the mountains and driving up them. He liked the air, liked the forest looming up above him and bordering the road, the dips and sweeps of the landscape climbing up and up, and how it felt like there was more room in the world with giants holding up the sky.

The hospital was bigger than he expected when he finally pulled up, still feeling guilty about parking in the Emergency Officer marked space even though he knew damn well that was exactly what it was for. He double-checked the squad car was locked but left his gun inside it where it couldn’t cause problems for them, couldn’t stick out to veterans who’d probably seen enough of them, and Eli Palmer was waiting on the steps to multi-storied white building already.

“Officer Hudson, Rook,” he called, arms folded across his chest and full beard doing nothing to hide his ever-unsmiling mouth. “You’d better be here to arrest someone.”

Rook walked up and kept his pace easy, relaxed. “We’re here to talk to Jacob and take your statement, Eli,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”

Eli scowled at him, or possibly Eli’s face did that without a lot of direction from the brain behind it just from sheer force of habit. “He’s out back. Building his own personal army,” he said pointedly. Rook nodded and Joey cut around the back without a word, headed to where Jacob stayed with some of the others despite his brother and his mansion full of empty rooms. Where there were small sets of temporary housing set up in little blocks for the vets who hadn’t made it somewhere else yet, “temporary” being relative. They had the routine down pat by that stage, so Rook took out his notebook and Eli launched into how he could understand a man wanting a nice set of rifles, a cosy collection of semi-automatics even, but more than a crate was pushing it and more than two was too many (it was _gratuitous_ , officer, it was _downright goddamn garish_ ).

He got most of the way through his fourth page of notes when Joey came storming back around front like it was Jacob’s house Staci had trapped the wolverine inside, face stormy. Rook flipped the book shut and caught up to her at the car. He looked back the way she’d came and spotted Jacob ( _motherfucking_ ) Seed right away just because there weren’t many six-foot-plus muscled redheads wandering around Hope Country, much less any with undercuts and chemical burns and John Seed standing next to them and smiling, flashing those perfect white teeth like he’d won the lottery.

Rook didn’t sigh, but it came close. “Him again, huh?” he asked under his breath.

“Check your mail for the fine, _Mister Seed_! I’m sure you can afford it!” Joey barked at the two of them, yanking the door open and climbing into the squad car before slamming the door closed after her so hard that the whole thing shook.

Rook stood for a minute longer in case Joey was the kind of mad that made her sort of helplessly teary and even madder about it like her tear ducts were betraying her, because the second to compose herself would save him a world of hurt later. John had already turned to Jacob, that wide smile sort of crooked at the edges, but Jacob looked right back at Rook with eyes not light blue, not stream-blue like his brother’s, but heavy with it. River-blue, river-heavy, until Rook broke his gaze and got into the driver’s seat.

Joey was dry-eyed so maybe there was a god after all, but she was flushed and breathing hard. “You know what he said to me?!” she demanded, flipping down the sun visor so she couldn’t see John Seed’s head. “He said I should swing by the church some time because I look like I’ve got some _sinning to confess_! Me! _He_ said that to _me_ , the goddamn prick!”

Rook absorbed this. “And the flower, right?” he asked. “Guessing that was him too.” The graceful lily-like thing tucked behind her ear he didn’t recognise – sue him, he wasn’t a florist – and bright against her long black hair. Hudson jerked and tore it out, tossing it into the back like it burned her.

“Just drive!” she said all squeaky with outrage and embarrassment and getting a flower from someone she absolutely hated but whose ass she had definitely checked out in the mirror at least once, which was a confusing combination for anyone to manage.  

They pulled back out onto the winding road and started back in silence before she finally told him what they’d gone there for in the first place.

“He’s got a goddamn library of permits,” she muttered. “He’s some sort of licensed dealer. But the older ones are out of date, just the ones I had time to look at, and fuck if his brother can’t afford the fines for it.”

Which, sure. But maybe they weren’t close, maybe Jacob wouldn’t ask, maybe fining Jacob to spite John sounded a hell of a lot like a bible story just because of the names, but Rook wasn’t going to argue. He was still new, months down the line, and the permits had been out of date. Sheriff Whitehorse shook his head over it when they got back and ran each permit against Jacob’s name properly, on the computer they had that was heavy like a cinderblock and that they sometimes used as a shelf when things were slower than normal.

Every single one checked out, and the fine got paid on time. Got sent in in cash with a bouquet of those graceful white flowers too, and a card with the new address for the church Joseph had set up across the Henbane river. Joey dumped them on his desk with a curse while he filled out the paperwork to get the fine all cleared up and that was fine by him, because he wasn’t a florist but his eyes worked just fine and the smell made him relax.

 

 

 

… Made his nose itch a bit, though.

 

 

 

Rook listened well and got popular fast, known enough that kids stopped pointing at the scar at his hairline, still ugly but white with years past. He was big and he listened to people better than anyone and the Bites were everywhere, what with the people coming to see Joseph for mass, so he had lists and lists of names written (Susan – older woman, blonde, do not ask about her son) with clues so he didn’t mess up too badly. Which he still did, but Joseph’s followers weren’t popular in Hope County – looked like they hadn’t been anywhere, from the sorry state of some of them – and that took attention away from him. It helped that he knew the rules. No talk of soulmates, keep a smile on when they talk about theirs and then freeze, remember you’re there, so they don’t see anything in your face. Take your hat off when you talk to a woman over seventy, but god help you if she’s sixty-nine. Don’t talk about the nightmares.

Don’t talk about the nightmares.

He ordered more blankets, weighted blankets online because it helped if he woke lonely, like the pamphlet told him he sometimes would and inevitably did. It didn’t help the ache inside those nights, but the vacant space around him didn’t seem as heavy with them there, and they looked normal enough to pass muster when Nancy came to pick him up one morning and shamelessly snooped around his house and he told her about how he still called his mother every week, and didn’t mention that she’d made friends once he moved out and didn’t have time to talk much anymore. He knew the rules, after all.

So, _don’t talk about the nightmares_ became how Rook didn’t talk about the nightmares. Which should have been easy since he didn’t have them often anymore, but wasn’t because they weren’t just dreams, they were the space inside him where his soulmates (his _three soulmates_ who _stopped looking_ , who had _enough_ with just each other) were meant to live and instead left walled up with the lights off.

And not talking about them meant he sometimes could forget when the weather was warm and Drubman Senior had the megaphone again, when there was Jessie to worry about down by the squad car with Nancy and four men fighting for the same stool in front of Mary May, when Kim Rye kicked Nick out of the house for Being Stupid While Kim Is Pregnant and he wandered onto private property feeling sorry for himself. But Rook would get home and remember all at once and it all felt wrong, because he didn’t have soulmates and instead all he had were nightmares and scars to remember them by, but it was still _something to remember them by_ and not-talking-meant-not-thinking-meant it made it all something Not To Talk About. Felt like something to be ashamed of, when he hadn’t had a choice and just hadn’t been chosen.

That was the thing about moving, though. You could stake all you wanted on it but you still took yourself with you, no matter where you went, and some things run bone-deep.

The suppressants didn’t work with a hundred percent certainty and moving wasn’t stress-free, so Rook wasn’t surprised to find himself by the wall again one night when the weather turned stormy and oppressive. He’d had snatches of Needles when he dozed before and had come to view him with a sort of weary fondness just because he was always _moving_ , shapeless and muffled though he was, while Knife was all stillness until suddenly he wasn’t and explosions shook inside Rook’s head but never shook the wall. Neither were there that night though and there was just the third one, their still silhouette and Rook, miles apart.

The third one didn’t keep themselves entertained like the others would, or torture themselves if that’s what Knife and Needles were doing instead. They just waited. It felt wrong to see them alone, waiting. Every time. Was somehow worse that they didn’t lunge for him like Needles had or done whatever it was Knife had that made his hands shake during storms still, when fireworks went off. Just waited for the other two, listening like he had and still not hearing him.

But,

 _not for you_ ,

Rook remembered, and he’d never named the third one because he had even less of them than he did the others, so he closed his eyes and woke up.

 

 

 

He had to drive two hours to renew his dream suppressant prescription, or tell the local pharmacist to get it ordered in and have That Conversation. He knew how fast a small town could shrink though, so he took the afternoon off and took the highway down instead. The flowers on his desk had wilted by then, so he tossed them out and replaced them with daisies, took his pills and let them ease how his soulmates lived their lives without him.

 

 

 

Joseph’s congregation reached into the hundreds before six months of Rook’s initial probationary period was over, and suddenly Eli’s complaints weren’t just on Thursdays anymore.

 

It reached a thousand, and it stopped just being Eli.

 

 

 

John Seed’s lodge got bigger, added watchtowers, and the veteran’s hospital had become a revolving door of traumatised soldiers who seemed more interested in Jacob than the doctors. Farmers flocked to Faith until she decided it wasn’t for her one day and left in the middle of the night (without clothes or bags, _Jacob Motherfucking Seed_ on three letters sent with claims blood-violent), and then the people she left behind just wailed, and wailed, and waited in her fields of white flowers until shy Rachel Jessop started talking to them in her soft voice with Joseph Seed beside her, kneeling in the dirt to touch their hands with his.

On their end, Nancy had the baby ( _Ada, that’s a famous girl mathematician you know, she’s gonna be smart just like me so you boys better watch out_ ) and went to dispatch part-time. Wolf-whistled at Rook over the radio when the tension got too much and Staci was biting out reports over the waves so sharp it was amazing he hadn’t chipped a tooth already. Did it to get his attention one night when Rook was covering a shift alone so Joey could nurse a hangover from drinks of commiseration with Jerome, whose flock had fled the pasture, and said, “you got a spare minute, Rookie?”

Rook pulled the radio off his belt without looking away from the college kids he’d been eyeballing where they were drinking outside the gas station, trying to work out which ones were underage so he could test and see how many he got right before he asked for IDs. “Rook here. Go ahead.”

“It’s nothing major. Just a bit of an errand for me, if you don’t mind?”

Rook raised his eyebrows and gave a hard stare over the radio to a kid he was _pretty_ sure was seventeen just to watch him sweat. “What do you need, Nance?”

A hesitation.

“You sure?”

Nancy didn’t hesitate, so Rook was firmer. “Anything for you, Nancy. How can I help?”

Her sigh of relief was a crackle of static. “That’s why you’re my favourite, Rookie. You mind swinging by the Eden’s Gate garden, out by the church? My sister was out with those darn peggies again and left Ada’s toy moose out there, she won’t go down without it and I swear, I would never shake my baby but my sister’s a grown woman and I wouldn’t mind smacking a b-,”

She cut herself off in more static and _language, Nancy, get a hold of yourself_ while Rook thought that over. It felt weird to call them _peggies_ when the Project at Eden’s Gate had been just the church before, to sneer at them with their weird cross when before they’d fixed roofs and helped the Widow Trench dig her weeds out. But weird crosses or not, their communal garden was just over the bridge and Ada had lungs like an actual bull moose, so he didn’t see the harm. He pushed himself off the squad car and reached for his keys, suppressing a grin when the (definitely teen) students broke formation and sprinted in all directions. “I’ll go get Horatio,” he told Nancy over the radio. “He’s one of us, after all.” Whitehorse had given her the moose, so it seemed only right that the Sheriff’s office take safe custody of him. Nancy’s crackling gratitude filled the car while he buckled himself in and got moving, headlights passing over a girl hiding from him in a hedge on the way past. He caught a name and pressed the button again while he indicated to turn onto the bridge. “Say again, Nance?”

“I said the Father picked him up to give back to us and he’ll be there for the next little while, you can’t miss him.”

Rook tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs and didn’t turn even though the road was clear.

“You mean Joseph?” he asked eventually.

“Yeah,” Nancy replied immediately. “He’s a preacher, they’re Fathers. Aren’t they?”

They were. But it had still caught at him wrong, like hitting your teeth with the fork by accident. “He’ll be waiting?” he asked.

“He said so. Just for the next half hour, though, so try to hurry up. Then you can get back to real police work, Rookie. Those college kids won’t card themselves.”

Rook snorted, humourless, and steered the car onto the bridge.

 

 

 

The wheels crunched on gravel when Rook pulled up and killed the headlights. The garden was well-lit with those fairy lights that had gone through girls’ dorm rooms like the sacking of Troy when he was at college, and looked so distinctly Faith that he almost laughed to picture the brothers, to picture Jacob there. The rows of flowers and flourishing vegetables were thick and crooked and a calculated kind of charming which just made him wary, especially when Joseph Seed stepped out and lifted a hand in greeting, rosary swinging from between thumb and forefinger.

Joseph Seed didn’t blink much, and the yellow sunglasses sat over those sharp eyes even at ten p.m.

“Mister Seed,” Rook greeted, hanging back away from the garden’s entrance, sticking to the left side of the car to be near the driver’s side. The distinctive white flowers were blooming near him, and fireflies flitted through the air like this was the penultimate scene in a rom-com relying on visuals for romantic chemistry instead of character development.

“Officer Rook,” Joseph replied, who fortunately had a quiet, intense kind of character that could derail any kind of cue. “I understand you’re looking for this?” He held out a hand with Horatio the Deputy Moose in it, his stupid crossed eyes made even more ridiculous against Seed’s stillness.

He didn’t step closer. He just held out his hand and waited.

Rook had long gotten too big for mind games along with a lot of physical ones and took a few steps to close the distance, taking Horatio without touching Joseph’s hand and managing not to make it look like a grab. “Thanks for holding onto him. I’ll tell Nancy you said hello.”

“Thank you,” Joseph said softly, hand held up for just a moment longer before he lowered it. Rook gave him another nod and turned to walk away from the garden with its calculated charm and Joseph Seed with his stillness like an empty snare when he spoke again. “Officer Rook.”

Rook turned back and Joseph had gotten closer again, taken a step to follow, and Rook was tall enough that he could see ink down the line of his shirt where Joseph had conceded to the end of the working day and undone his collar. He was briefly fascinated by the idea of a tattooed preacher, more a comic book character than someone he expected to meet in postcard-Hope-County and Joseph waited for him to look back at his face before he spoke again. “I haven’t seen you at church. Are you a believer?”

“No,” Rook replied automatically. It would have been polite to pause. But he was big enough and direct enough that he’d learned to be firm without being aggressive – hard work when _big_ and _direct_ could automatically mean _threatening_.

Joseph didn’t seem offended but then, he didn’t seem the type to feel easily threatened either. “It’s not uncommon for people born whole to feel alone. I don’t mean to be rude,” he continued steadily, calm even when Rook who was born whole tilted his head just slightly, tilted the Bites on his neck a little closer to his shoulder and straightened just a little, felt that wall inside himself hard and wholly at the sight of Joseph Seed’s Unbitten neck. “I just want you to know that all of God’s children have a place here. You are wanted here,” he stressed with that voice made for reverence and preaching, directed just at Rook in the dark. “Should you choose.”

Rook stood and the fireflies buzzed and he smiled with too many teeth, and he got in his squad car and drove away to give Horatio the Deputy Moose back. He drove to Nancy and he finished his shift as dawn broke and got home and took three suppressants instead of two, because _fuck_ Joseph Seed who’d never have to take them himself and whose church was full of people _born whole_ like Rook, who wanted to be wanted and who could hear it from Joseph Seed and his brothers if they just came to church, just knelt down and needed for them.

 

 

Of course there were hundreds of them. Where else could they find that? No one else could say it like that, just right, too sharp for hearing and just sharp enough to slide under the skin.

 

 

 

Rook woke with a bleeding nose the next day and spent it weeding those white flowers out of his front yard, where peggies had planted them before they’d ever called them that. The feeling of Needles hung in his head all day, blood in the back of his throat like Knife and that ache between his third and fourth ribs that was the only name he had for the other one.

 

 

 

Nancy didn’t ask him to run errands for her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone go listen to Go Home by Emilie and Ogden. Also, their song White Lies. Also, just all of it. I'll wait.


	3. highlight reels, over and over

Mary May stopped letting peggies into the bar some eight months after Rook joined the Hope County Sheriff’s department and she put up a sign to that effect, even though peggies were forbidden alcohol themselves, because sometimes rules were for following and sometimes they were for saying a thing out loud. They’d mostly come for the jukebox anyway, which they didn’t need when Rachel Jessop turned Faith Seed and stopped crying, started singing and laughing at things no one else could see, carried music all around her but looked in the eyes like it had been pulled out of somewhere important. Fences grew higher, grew barbs at the highest and sprouted locks on gates. The pretty white flowers became the bliss became the green haze of peggies too far gone, and by the time Eli Palmer had been proven right and a hundred-foot stone Seed looked over them all from the mountains, he didn’t feel like gloating over it any more.

The general consensus of the Sheriff’s department was that everything was fucked.

But they were bloody-minded and more than a little helpless, still went out on the usual calls. Domestic disputes, underage drinking and Sharky Boshaw (who’d never met a matchstick he wouldn’t marry) – but the air was getting heavier, and the eight-point symbol of Eden’s Gate became something that made you tense all down your back, shoulders squaring. Whitehorse made calls to the Guard that got courtesy calls back at first and then none at all, left messages that didn’t get returned and filed reports no one took seriously.

And then the video.

It stuck in points in Rook’s mind, like a highlight reel from an already short video. The clink of an ammunition belt. The fast, strained breaths of the man holding the phone, the way it shook a little (the way the man shook a little) and the beam of light that caught Joseph Seed’s outstretched hands. The quiet, intense character of The Father expanding out through his lean body but no less potent, like he was a black hole expanding, his preacher’s hands taking a man by the face and pressing his thumbs in through his eyes until he hit skull and then tossing him aside like he weighed nothing.

They didn’t get a call back when they sent that one in. They got a man with swagger, a bulletproof vest and who found reasons to get up in Rook’s face after he sneered at him in the office and he saw how Rook just stood up, and up, and up, taking it personally like some men on a smaller scale did. Marshal Burke, who slapped an arrest warrant down on the table. Who’d read Whitehorse’s reports and had a list of sins for Joseph to answer to that John had not yet tattooed into his brother’s arms. Burke, who’d read the reports without understanding them, the sort of man who’d seen the Hope County postcards but never climbed a mountain and still showed up thinking he knew the lay of the land.

They were going to arrest Joseph Seed.

Rook nodded and tapped his fingers on his desk, and when he met Joey’s eyes over the one shared computer, she looked away first.

The general consensus, after all, of the Sheriff’s department, was that everything was fucked.

 

 

 

Rook did up his uniform jacket by the weapons locker that night and double-checked his sidearm, the one Staci had sat him down and taught him to strip and clean the second he heard where they were off to. Joey was vibrating with energy – god he hoped John wasn’t there – and Whitehorse was waiting by the door, still trying to tell Burke that peggies didn’t give a shit about warrants. He felt a gentle touch on his lower back and turned, mind still on the message he’d left on his mother’s answering machine and whether she’d hear it before he left.

“Don’t go,” Nancy said like he’d yanked the words out of her, eyes dark and wide when he looked back in surprise. “Don’t go, Rook,” she repeated. “You don’t want to get mixed up in this.”

Rook reached down and touched her shoulder, jerked his head towards the Marshal. “I know he’s an ass, Nance, but you saw the video. No getting around it.”

She didn’t smile at him like she had that morning, and every day before. “Please,” she said, and he just looked at her. And looked.

“Rookie!” Whitehorse called. “You comin’ or what?” Rook tore his eyes from Nancy’s face long enough to nod at him, and he told Nancy he’d be careful before he walked out, feeling her eyes on his back all the way to the chopper. He’d remember that later, that Nancy, who had a baby and no husband and who the old ladies whispered about when she was only just within earshot. Who could talk underwater, remembered everyone in town and who’d asked him not to go because she’d known what would happen if he did but still let him hang because Joseph Seed told her to.

 

 

 

The white church and its trees didn’t look so pretty surrounded by barbed wire fences and boxed white boarding houses, the path to it paved with men holding semi-automatics and dogs on leashes foaming at the mouth to try and get to The Law as the three of them walked through the compound. It looked like a military camp in a war zone and not where the congregation had parked their cars to go to Sunday service less than a year before, but the noise coming through the closed church doors was still that rapturous hymn Rook had heard so many times that he knew all the words without ever having gone inside.

“Ready?” Whitehorse asked Burke, who just nodded, and then they pushed the doors open. And hell followed with him, as the quote went.

 

 

 

“Sometimes the best thing to do,” Joseph Seed (the Father) told Rook, sharp eyes on his face and hands held (reaching) out for the cuffs, shirt gone to show lean muscle and a lifetime of warning signs tattooed and cut into his skin, “is to walk away,” which was a thing Rook understood but had never been able to accept. So Rook nodded politely, the way he did to everything Joseph Seed had ever said to him, and he tightened the cuffs around the preacher’s wrists exactly to procedure, professional as you please. He turned him so that he could walk behind, one hand on his shoulder to steer him, even though putting the three other Seeds at his back felt like a death sentence. He did it because it was his job, and Burke and Whitehorse led the way outside.

It felt strange to have a hand on Joseph’s bare shoulder, near where the Bites would have been on a man less _blessed_ ( _thousands_ of them, all blessings he’d armed to the teeth), and even through his black gloves Rook could feel the muscle there and how relaxed he was. Joseph Seed, strolling in chains. The air was cloying in the desperation rolling off the peggies, or maybe that was just the bliss again, and filling up more and more with noise (you can’t take him, we _love_ him, you _can’t take our Father_ ). With cries and shouts and the _thwum-thwum_ of the helicopter blades as they approached, coming into sight just as things got nasty. Rocks started to fly and Rook should have fucking carried Joseph out of there, why had they ever trusted him to _walk_ – and he pushed Joseph into his seat in the helicopter while Joey tried to drag the doors closed on the other side and Staci took them up. Peggies tried to claw their way in, scrabbling fingers and the whites of their eyes and a gunshot, Burke giving into the violence in the air and shooting a man off him as the helicopter ascended, pale limbs taking another up the front until there was a sickening grinding noise and the air was suddenly rich with the stink of blood.

“We’re going down!” Staci shouted as Joey screamed and Rook finally managed to get his stupid safety harness strapped, and the earth tilted then rushed up to meet them with a sound like the world ending, Joseph Seed singing about grace all the way down.

 

 

 

 

You know what?

Yeah, actually. Hanging in a world fuzzy and dark around the edges, trapped upside-down in his helicopter seat while peggies came into blurry view through the twisted, broken door, Rook could sort of see what Ashleigh had meant back in college. It was weird, Bitten grouping together, and the laugh made him choke on air.

 

 

 

 

Fucking _Nancy_.

 

 

-

 

 

The Reaping Eden’s Gate had been looking forward to started with Rook slinking through the underbrush with a pistol in one hand and the other held out to steady him, started with his arm wrapped around a peggie’s neck to drag him down and crush the air out of him. The fast and red feeling of adrenaline strong enough Rook could taste it and it made him feel sure even though gunshots would ring out periodically through the trees that were thick and close enough to hide him but not to protect him if someone saw.

He’d never been so grateful for the thick forests he’d already loved when his radio went off and Burke called for him, for anyone, like a moron or maybe just like a man who’d never lived in rural anywhere and didn’t know every man and his dog had a short-wave radio. Rook picked up fast just to cut him off, hissed, “shut up and wait,” before a sharp-eared peggie came crashing after him anyway. Rook ducked low and took his knees out with a shove, crawling over him to twist the man’s head past his shoulder with a _crack_ that was too simple. Limp bodies were meant to be heavy, killing was meant to be hard and Rook had a high shivering note keening in his mind that felt like a scream but physically – hell, he wasn’t even tired. Though he was probably concussed, he only realised when he ducked under a half-fallen tree and had to stop to vomit, yellow bile tinted sick-pink on the way up. He wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand and had to shrug (what the hell else was he going to do) and he kept moving.

He found Burke holed up in one of the abandoned trailers John “nothing-passive-about-my-aggression” Seed had bought up for the land and left empty, shaking and manic with fury and fear. “I had no idea, man,” he told Rook, shoving a rifle into his arms. “ _No_ idea, these people are fucking crazy!”

“Yep,” Rook said, and checked to make sure the safety was off because it had just been that kind of day.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Burke swore to him, grabbing him by the shoulders for one wide-eyed second and shaking him. “We’re gonna call the national guard, the FBI, fucking _everybody_ , and we are gonna burn this place to the goddamn ground.” A shout from outside made his fingers dig hard into Rook’s shoulders and he tensed for a second before he dropped into a crouch and got over to peer out the window. “Shit, how did they find us so fast?” he hissed.

“No idea,” Rook said blandly, there being a time and place for blame and wringing a federal marshal’s fucking neck.

“Cover me. I’ll get to the truck, and we’ll get out of here and straight down the highway to Missoula.” Burke circled back towards the front door, snatching the keys off the counter. Rook took a second to honestly wonder what the hell kind of life progression took someone from being a child with three soulmates and a loving mother and left him a grown man Bitten, concussed and holding a rifle to ward off a doomsday cult in an abandoned trailer in rural Montana, and then he rolled his shoulders, rolled it off and smashed the window out with his elbow and started firing. It came naturally, just like it had with his hands, years of violence and screaming in inside his own head stretching out through his hands and that high, hurting note still making it hard anyway. One peggie, two peggie, three peggie – BURKE – before the marshal managed to get to the truck, not knowing Rook had almost taken his head clean off on autopilot that had kicked with the ghost of sand and blood in his throat, Knife-angryangry _angry_ suddenly thick in his thoughts before the marshal fucking beeped the horn at him like he was late for the carpool. Rook climbed out the window and had to duck a shovel of all things before he could reach the truck, darting back and then forwards again to slam the butt of his rifle into the sneaky fucker’s face, watched him crumple like a tissue.

“Nice,” Burke said, eyebrow cocked when Rook looked up and not leaning away when he climbed into the passenger seat like he had when they’d sat together in the helicopter, like Rook had found they wouldn’t when they realised his size wasn’t purely to spite them. They pulled out onto the highway, Burke talking to him while Rook tried to shake the ringing in his ears because guns were _loud_ , god damn it, before, “shit, they’ve blocked the roads!” Burke cursed, and yanked the wheel hard to the side, making Rook glad physics wouldn’t let him fall out a car window that size.

Peggies were coming up behind in their white trucks, men standing up in the tray in clear violation of road safety (fucking _Nancy_ ) so Rook obligingly leant out the window and braced himself on the cab, swapping the rifle out for the pistol to return fire at them and trying not to shoot himself in the face every time Burke decided roads were for idiots. A hard bump and swerve down the darkened train tracks revealed the tray, and –

 

Oh.

 

 _Oh_.

 

Trailing explosions, the truck hurtled back from the hill and onto the main drag again, clipping a peggie scrambling for the roadblock they’d barely managed to set up on the mouth of the bridge as they straight barrelled through it. The nasal hum of a plane whined overhead, the descending note of it – well, descending – while Burke cursed and headlights lit up the way in front of them. Rook dragged himself back in from where he’d been hanging out the window as the plane fired, bullets tearing through the road in front of them, the van speeding towards them and sending it up in flames.

 

 

 

Sticking in points, like a highlight reel. The explosion blooming in front of them. The lights of the plane, bisected by the steel bars of the bridge above.

 

The water, rushing up to meet them and Rook, clawing his way out from the sinking wreck of the truck and struggling for the waving, wavering light up through the water, everything muffled and dark.

 

The icy mud of the riverbank while searchflights flashed in the distance, in the ruined bridge, and then nothing.

 

 

-

 

 

 

Rook woke up on the kind of bed that felt like a punishment and wasn’t long enough for his legs, blinking up at a fluorescent light in a concrete ceiling and Dutch Roosevelt staring him right in the eye from where Rook was almost entirely sure the older man had been watching him sleep.

 

 

His luck did not improve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, same.
> 
> Or,
> 
> Yeah, I could write this during the day, or I could write it at 1am in the dark when my eyes are itchy. Dealer's choice.


	4. every grief i meet

It was funny how the day before, “Dutch’s Island” had been pejorative. Cautionary. Like “here there be dragons” on a map if dragons came either scaly or as weathered older doomsday preppers, hurling cans of mosquito repellent at tourists with an aggressive sort of philanthropy. Rook thought about that while he stared at the wall (knife-deep words _the_ _world is a diagonal, I am a balancing point_ and the tally underneath) and Dutch came in with a jacket. Definitely a spare of his own and when Rook saw it he started laughing, deep-loud right down from the diaphragm and coughing up the river still and Dutch looked at it too and huffed because even aggressive philanthropy could only stretch a thing so far. Rook ended up sitting in a towel on the dryer with all his worldly belongings tumbling around inside. He sat and heard Dutch out, watched him drag in a corkboard with the Seed’s faces on it and red string. Still a little crazy even at the end of the world, but Rook paid close attention because that was what he did. Jacob the Soldier. John the Baptist. Faith the Siren. Key themes pinned out in red which were that they had their hands in houses, silos, fields and on the county’s throat, pressing down harder and harder (Joseph the _Father_ ).

The Seeds had taken everything, but Dutch did at least wait until Rook had his pants back on before he handed him the key to the bunker door, a new radio, a nine-mil SIG-Sauer and told him to get on it. Starting with Dutch’s front yard, of course. Dutch’s island, that the day before had meant _here there be dragons_ and that day meant _ours_ , the kind of thing said when someone else wanted something and it needed to be clear who they’d have to fight to get it.

Rook, in this case, with a nine-millimetre and – after he shot a man through his grin by the old wood-rot red boathouse on the river – an assault rifle.

An _assault_ rifle.

Jesus.

“You’re not too bad at this!” Dutch told him over the radio as Rook peered down into the slow-moving river, dark and depth uncertain where the nearby trees cast shade over it, decided against swimming into the boathouse through the boat entrance and rounded the corner to kick the door in instead. “You might be a natural.”

“Might,” Rook said even though his hand was nowhere near his radio, instead lifted up to yank a circuit breaker that sparked like it minded.

“Try taking the Forest Ranger Station next, if you’re in the neighbourhood. It’s a good base of operations for those damn peggies.”

Rook nodded to himself, shoving the broken door aside on his way out and then he stopped. Picked up his radio. “Dutch,” he said, sly, “are you asking me to get the peggies _off your lawn_?”

He left that with him and had climbed the rocky hill back to the water pumping shed, had it working with a deafening _gurglurch_ before Dutch answered, “fuck you, Rook,” and made him bark out a laugh while Dutch told him just for that, he could get the radio tower back too and he hoped he was _afraid of heights, you smart-mouthed fuck_.

 

 

He wasn’t, but it took him two hours to clear the Forest Ranger’s Station, an hour and fifty of those minutes spent lost with Dutch giving him bad directions on purpose.

 

He climbed down from the tower just as the sun started sliding down in the sky, which always seemed to happen much faster than it rose when it really got into it. Rook made his way down in yellow, then orange, then that rose-red light while Dutch told him something weird was happening – _weird_ – and he needed to find a television.

 

 

Rook learned about the power of _yes_ on a flickering tv screen about the size of his old smartphone in the maintenance shed for the radio tower, because technicians got bored too. Watched John Seed with his stream-blue eyes and his after-drinks shirt now navy, open to show lean, pale chest and just how many darks and colours curated him too, inked lines and words scrawled across his arms, his hands. Camera clinging to the dark in his shirt, his hair, the tattoos peering through and his well-fitting clothes, dark too like the smile he sent curved towards the camera when Hudson was pushed forwards with her mascara run down to her taped-shut mouth.

“If you are watching,” John Seed said, his bright eyes warm like boiling water was, still and blue and there to burn, “you have been selected. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything.” Voice dropped at the end like he had leant into Rook’s space, so sure of himself. “We’ll come for you.”

It flickered again. Went dark then white-noise static before Rook leaned forward and turned it off and remembered how Joseph Seed said they wanted him, had a place for him, remembered how so many (but not all) peggies had Bites, and his stomach felt sour.

He sat there while the rose-light turned blue turned gone entirely and in the end he went back to the bunker to sleep off the cuts and bruises and the rest of the concussion through the night, sleeping with his knees curled up to fit on the couch and Dutch throwing his rifle (safety off, was Dutch fucking _kidding_ him) on his chest to wake him at dawn. “Kid, you gotta go! If you know the way to Rae Rae’s pumpkin farm, she’s radioing for help - peggies are crawling up her driveway and they aren’t playin’ around anymore. Get there as fast as you can!”

 

 

Dutch was not, in fact, kidding him.

 

 

 

Rook knew the way to the pumpkin farm backwards, but he still didn’t get there in time to see Rae Rae alive there. Slowed down by having to keep off the roads and jump fences through the rollings, cutting through the apple orchard, losing minutes at a time as his lungs burnt in the frigid dawn air and the light grew warmer too slow. The door to her house hung open and crooked when he finally got there, busted off one hinge, and when Rook ducked down behind the produce stand he could see a pale arm splayed out and motionless in the dirt of their front yard. He crept around, sound masked by the blaring speakers hooked up to the back of the Eden’s Gate truck and the jeering of the men there in the mayonnaise-coloured rough shirts they wore, guns held loose and easy at their sides.  He left his rifle slung over his back and grabbed the pistol from his stolen holster instead, and the whole thing took probably about two minutes, tops, even with the shallow slice a panicked flail with a knife had taken out of his bicep. Rook pressed down on it until it stopped bleeding then kicked the lock off the cage they’d lifted onto the semi-trailer, a bundle of fur and motion shooting immediately past him with a high yelp. Black and grey and splotched all over, Boomer ( _my pride and joy, bird dog champ of ’15, who’s my good boy_ ) made for the front yard, where Rook could see two still figures sprawled in the dirt under the sun from where he stood on the trailer.

He’d killed two people as soon as he’d arrived but Rook dropped to a crouch in Rae Rae’s front yard and this somehow wasn’t the same, stung like the cut had when he felt her skin just a little warm still, her eyes locked open and sightless with nothing left in them because he just hadn’t gotten there fast enough. Had only just not been fast enough.

Boomer whined and trod his big paws harder into the ground and crouched there pressing his wet black nose into Rae Rae’s dead hands like that’s what she was waiting for, like she was playing dead and it was time for a reward, and he made a wounded noise that cut straight through Rook’s ears into the raw-lonely centre of his brain.

… Fuck.

He’d always wanted a dog. His mother had thought they were too desperate, too needy. Too love-hungry. It made her uncomfortable but it had just made him want one more, and Boomer’s stupid, beautiful face was right there. Looking at him like he could help, talk some sense into Rae Rae because look at him, he was being such a _good boy_ but everything was still all wrong, everyone he loved had still bled out in the dirt. Rook stared at him and he could sort of get it, actually. Boomer’s stupid-beautiful- _trusting_ face waiting for Rook to say his name and help him and _love him_ , and yeah, it was sort of embarrassing. Seeing that kind of naked desperation, and no, Rook’s mother didn’t have many pictures of him lying around, did she.

Rook whistled and patted his leg. Boomer immediately jumped onto his hind legs to brace his paws on his chest, whining and wriggling into his hands for comfort while something hot like tears cracked open in Rook’s chest.

Shit.

 

 

 

So. Rook had a dog.

He picked his radio off his belt and gave Dutch the news. “… That dog’ll take good care of you,” Dutch said but he didn’t say Rae Rae’s name even though Rook knew they sat together at the post office on Sundays to bitch out the postman, who they’d been teasing for years and was probably dead too.

“I’m sorry,” Rook told him. “I wasn’t fast enough.”

Dutch sighed heavy into the radio, a long spread of static between them. “Nah, kid,” he said. “Come back two years ago and sit on your ass, then you’d have had something to apologise for. Now get moving before peggies show up looking for their buddies.”

 

 

 

With all that going on, he’d managed to get Rae Rae and her son covered in the earth, sweating right through his only shirt and gloves full of the shovel’s splinters, when he remembered the dream suppressants. Sitting on his nightstand, a helicopter ride, a blocked highway and a cult-turned-army away. His hands tightened around the shovel but he kept moving and remembered hard that he’d brought up blood the night before, he’d had a rough twenty-four hours and that was the copper at the back of his throat, and while he was at it he could probably blame that lurch in his chest on it too. Had probably damaged something important in the crash, he thought once, then again (much louder) and he patted the top of the graves down with the flat of the shovel when he was done. Tossed it away and patted Boomer again, who’d sat and watched him stiller than he’d ever seen a dog, the whole time he’d hid his old life in the soil. Rook nodded, nodded again, and then he snarled, “fuck!” and kicked the shovel even further away. Breathed out hard through his nose and rubbed a hand over his jaw – needed a shave, where the hell had that peggie’s knife gone – and he let that sink in. Bitten for miles but he couldn’t know who’d broken just the same way he had, who had nightmares in need of shoving down with slow-release coating, because who would admit to that? He hadn’t, had he (don’t talk about the nightmares).

He made himself relax by degrees, unfist his hands and unspool, and he looked back out over the Halloween-perfect pumpkin patch and the rows of apple trees just beyond, far as the eye could see, leaves shining in the morning sun. He’d also seen peggies crawling all over the apple orchard’s depot on the way in when he’d been racing through the fields, and he didn’t have a lot of interest in the building itself but he had definitely caught sight of the big, industrial-sized barrels of liquid fertiliser by the side and that had been some good dynamite the night before, hadn’t it? Cleared the peggie problem right up.

Rook holstered his pistol, took his rifle by the strap and whistled for Boomer before they went loping down through the fields together, back towards the main road.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook spent a week killing his way through patches of cultists on his way to Fall’s End and spending most of _that_ thinking about his pills instead of the swathe he was cutting through people who had once been like him and weren’t (anything) anymore. Took back US Auto on his way through and spent more time cutting through forests, hurtling down ziplines than he did on the road, and he went through every medicine cabinet and drawer of every abandoned, blood-stained house on the way and didn’t find a single suppressant, not a box of painkillers for after even. He went to sleep thinking of them because he was used to thinking of what he wanted most as he closed his eyes, and instead of nothingness and a weighted blanket to hold his edges in, he got the wall.

He got the blurred shape of Needles on the other side of it, scraping raw against his mind with words he couldn’t make out, he got Knife pacing back and forth but just for brief snatches. Still tossing and turning and Rook knew that about him, collected the information while the third figure stood between them in moments at a time because this bond, this wall was only there for one in four and twenty-five percent never had been a passing grade. He dreamt of the wall and the outside world was creeping in, taking the taste of blood with him like Knife had years ago, and Rook pressed his hands to it for the first time in years and he didn’t let himself beg, he didn’t.

He did let himself walk right into a set of parked peggie gas trucks right in view of a dozen security cameras the morning after, and he placed a bundle of dynamite down whistling, unspooled the cord all the way back to the forest where he put his sunglasses on, covered Boomer’s eyes with his hand and set it off.

“You’re kind of an asshole,” Dutch grumbled over the radio like _he’d_ never woken Rook up at four a.m. to glory in a bone-shaking explosion and then he heard, Rook finally heard a voice he’d once heard happy before, when Mary May cut in over the shortwave with,

_“What the fuck was that?!”_

 

 

 

She asked him to come to Fall’s End right away to help ( _we got peggies crawlin’ all over us and we can’t last forever, deputy_ ), so Rook was one gas station away from US Auto and a whole Monday after the end of the world when his radio came to life again, “ _deputy_ ,” in a voice like a blade. It took him a second to recognise the voice – to recognise he didn’t really know the voice since he always assumed he would nowadays, so he settled back against the ruined counter, wiped his forehead with his hand and lifted the radio to his ear.

It sat silent for a moment. He thumbed the button just to make sure he hadn’t been holding it down by accident.

 _“I know what you’ve been doing, deputy. Sin is_ pervasive _,_ ” the man told him, like he was standing in front of him to give a speech on sin, every word emphasised just right as he stood in front of a courtroom to argue for his own life and shitfuckfuckshit _John Seed_ carried on with a razor-edge of rage in him, “ _it drives us to do unspeakable acts. I know the feelings that drive you. I know them_ intimately,” and a little shocked still, Rook wondered if the way John said “intimately” counted in those tallymarks of sin. “ _But I can help you, deputy_. _I can wash away these things, I can Cleanse your_ soul.”

“How?” Rook asked when John took a breath between sentences. Then looked at the radio like he’d never seen it before, who the hell had put that there and how hadn’t he shot them on the way in. That hadn’t been his voice, deep and rough because he hadn’t said anything in a week except Boomer’s name, just because there was no one worth talking to and John Seed certainly wasn’t the exception.

John paused. _“…what?”_

Rook wet his lips, thumb hesitating before he pressed down again. “Cleanse my soul. I didn’t know they taught that in law school.”

Boomer propped his paws on the counter to investigate the impulse-buy candy bars that had been left behind, nose snuffling through the wrappers. John Seed left the airwaves silent for another long moment.

He came back like he couldn’t help himself. Thin-dark angry. “ _It will be painful, deputy. But it will be worth it,”_ and then he cut out on the last word when it got a low kind of growl and didn’t say anything else, even though Rook stood there for an age and waited.

“Wow,” Dutch said eventually, a warm voice from the speaker, familiar like vinyl, “you really pissed in his cornflakes, huh?”

“Don’t say it,” Rook warned him, but he hadn’t pressed the button fast enough and Dutch got in there first with,

“You just _had_ to go for the trucks, you maniacal shit,”

and yeah, he really had.

 

 

-

 

 

 

John was a talker and honestly, every time that thought hit him, Rook thought a little more about a baby called Ada and how he’d leave her an orphan if the reminders kept up. John liked to radio him without caring that it wasn’t a phone, it was being sent to _everyone_ who then had the privilege of listening to his thin-dark anger turn red when Rook put on his serious face and started burning a path to Fall’s End.

 _You really won’t learn, will you deputy?_ when he sent a hunting party that Rook sniped from the top of a treehouse he’d climbed for no reason but fulfilling one childhood fantasy, and he’d written his name on it before he left.

 _You have sinned,_ the almost amused one he got for reclaiming an outpost with a baseball bat and heart racing because Boomer had chased a squirrel inside, the bright-dumb dog that he loved, just to hear, _you have sin_ , hissed after him later, John’s voice thick with something he hadn’t heard before, that made his skin itch. It kept up, it just kept going, John Seed talking-hissing-promising into empty air, somehow so sure Rook was listening.

 _You will confess, you will_ confess _, I will drag confession out of you and carve it into your skin, I will-_

while Rook took one look at the trucks parked to block the people in Fall’s End in, to be driven towards like cattle to a grate (meat to the metal), and kicked one of his peggie leaders in the head for his rocket launcher.

Rook heard it all because Rook was always listening, even to John Seed who seemed torn between threatening and trying to pull him in, never sure where the line was between bait and brutality, because he knew John Seed didn’t have Bites but some part of him saw the words carved into his skin and remembered that hot, then cold, then numb again. Not pity but he just wanted to _hear_ , because John got it all so wrong with the wrathful religious mania that hit whenever Rook blew up something he’d liked, but after a while he started hitting on some true things too, so Rook heard,

you were the one with the Bites, weren’t you deputy,

and he heard,

you are wanted, you are _loved_ , I’m not going to _give up_ ,

and Rook learnt the unique violation of being known without your consent when John bit that out sharp and seething while Rook lay waiting to fall asleep with the radio on his chest for the night, in the dark attic of the Spread Eagle that Mary May had set up for him when she learned he didn’t like big, empty rooms.

He didn’t like that either.

He set off the morning after he helped reclaim Fall’s End and made back for Dutch’s Island, for something that wasn’t the layer of John that the radio put over everything since he couldn’t just turn it off, but he hesitated for a moment before he crossed the river.

“ _Deputy_ ,” John had said over the radio at three that morning when he must have gotten bored with a victim by then. Not because he’d known Rook was leaving as soon as Mary May would stop thanking him or Jerome stopped looking at him and talking about God. Not because he somehow knew Rook was about to walk gladly out of his reach. “ _Say something_.” So four hours and miles later Rook couldn’t wait anymore, left without saying goodbye to Fall’s End to step forward and the second he crossed the river he felt something shift. Something important, like the wind had gone sweet and the world turned just a little too hard to the left when he hadn’t been watching. He stopped Boomer with his foot, sliding his rifle into his hands and scanning the treeline, the branches that shifted in the wind like fingers covering his eyes and casting patterns on the water. Leaves drifting to the ground in the breeze, and fireflies starting to come through where the forest blocked out the light and left itself dark.

Were fireflies even native to Montana, Rook had to wonder, before the ground fell out from under him, Faith’s ground, and he saw the flowers by the water’s edge.

 

 

 

“Welcome to the bliss.”

 

 

 

Bliss was a chemical kind of euphoria that took hold like heroin or scopolamine. It had hallucinogenic qualities, interfered with the body’s ability to regulate dopamine, how it registered pain, and was a derivative of the flowers the Seeds had modified to hell and back. Rook knew that because he’d read the reports on it, got the toxicology back from the lab when Sam Bowman hadn’t stood on his porch one week while his wife refused to blame him (Nancy begging her to save her own goddamn life) some months earlier and instead had been found bobbing facedown in the Henbane with more bliss than blood running through him and a Bitten wife with an eight-point cross around her neck at his funeral. He’d read the reports and had prepared himself, braced for it when he’d watched Joseph Seed dig a man eyes out with steady thumbs on a shitty last-gen phone screen, because _bliss_ and _peggies_ were basically synonyms.

He hadn’t expected it to _hurt_.

The bliss fled to his lungs and the world went hazy, the sky went milky green as the hard ground turned to soft grass and Faith Seed’s voice rung out sweet just in time for agony to cut his legs out from under him, railroad spikes through both eyes that made his throat raw from shrieking before he knew he’d opened his mouth, separating synapses in the dark-brain and sending _hurts-hurts-HURT_ instead. The milk-green sky splintered above him and cut through with throbbing red lines, veins on the roof of the world that were pulse-flaring with his agony and Faith was making confused sounds, panicked sounds because there was a hard-sharp noise cutting through the air and just growing louder, louder, louder. Rook writhed in the grass and he shrieked himself bleeding-throbbing-empty and the soft ground was a hardwood floor then gone fuzzy around the edges, was hands pressing into his chest like they could hold him together and a thin-sharp voice like needles through a dream, and Rook heard

stop,

and he heard,

stop it, stop it, stop it stop _hurting_

and he opened his eyes to a blinding light, a torch shone in his eyes with a man on each side struggling to hold him to a gurney. “Son, it’s me, it’s Earl!” Sheriff Whitehorse yelled, a woman at his shoulder with a fuck-off-big needle and a terrified expression. He’d broken one arm free to hold her off when the fact it was Whitehorse really struck him, left him surprised enough for her to sink it into his chest and depress the plunger. He gasped and shook, felt weak and hot and strong all at once before the fight went out of him like a light, left him sagging and breathless on the bed.

The man on his left elbow released him slow, but the one who’d thrown his whole bodyweight on Rook’s shoulder took himself just as quickly off him again, scrambling back. Earl Whitehorse staggered with a bruise so big and fast-forming on the side of his face that Rook had left him a different man and really, truly,

 

Fuck the bliss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John, go the fuck to sleep (oh wait).  
> Title from I measure every Grief I meet by Emily Dickinson.


	5. if one were to sting me

Rook had about an hour to lie on the gurney, knees tucked up to fit, and let the pounding in his head drown slowly under the second injection they’d given him when the nosebleed he’d woken up with hadn’t stopped for fifteen minutes, and the capillaries in his eyes stayed throbbing and flared.

“Why do people like the bliss,” he asked no one with a voice hoarse from screaming, hand holding the icepack to his forehead, pressing him a little further down into the one on the back of his neck.

“I don’t think she gave you bliss, son,” Earl said doubtfully, sitting on the bed next to him. He looked older. He’d always had hair like straw and the handlebar moustache made him more the character of The Sheriff rather than Earl Whitehorse, but there were more lines around his eyes and mouth, like he’d frowned deeply and often since Rook had last seen him. His skin was waxier, like something inside was pulling it tighter over his bones. “The bliss is … I mean, those Angels of hers run around screaming like their insides are on fire, I’ll give you that, but still…” Earl leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, pressed folded fingers to his mouth. Fingertips stained with nicotine, cracked and dry. “What do you remember from the crash?”

Rook slid the icepack a little lower so the cold could numb his eyes, the throbbing pain taken root behind them. “All of it,” he rasped. It was so strange, to think that less than two weeks ago he had never killed someone. That he’d walked towards that helicopter and known it wasn’t safe but thought the worst thing could happen was to die.

Earl’s fingers were white, pressed together hard. “I remember walking through a field,” he told him, face aged but eyes ancient, “and then I saw her. You’ve seen her too, haven’t you, Rook?”

Rook had closed his eyes and he did have a sort of face to dredge up, but it wasn’t Faith Seed, who’d reached him too late for his eyes to still work. He remembered Rachel Jessop with her hair in a ponytail always a little too loose and the hair escaping, eyes always scanning a room for exits, all nervous. Like a rat in a cage. He could hear her new voice a little if he tried, sweeter and higher and dazed, like she’d descended from some great height to speak to him but come down just that bit too fast.

“Whatever she says, whatever she promises – it’s a lie. Stay away from her. Or you’ll end up like the Marshall.”

Rook lifted the icepack and looked at Earl, his pressed-white fingers. “The Marshall?”

It tasted a little like blood to speak, to breathe in. But he’d dislocated two fingers last week, been shot in the arm and started more fires than he’d put out. It wasn’t the worst thing to happen to him, not by far.

Stop it, stop _hurting_.

Earl sighed heavy. “The bliss makes you forget. Makes you feel free. You wanna stay there forever, but it isn’t real. None of it’s real, Rook, you gotta remember that. If Virgil and Tracey hadn’t found me, I’d still be out there.”

“They didn’t find Burke, then,” Rook said, since that was the important part. “She’s got him.” He didn’t think Faith was keen to line up another chat with him. She being half his size and still Rachel Jessop all the way down inside except for the layers of Faith on top, that it sounded like were made of faith and something green that made lights sway. He remembered her panicking and no matter what Earl thought she’d _said_ it was bliss, and he was starting to think that there was just something wrong with him too far down to really see, that wasn’t right somehow. A faultline in the bedrock of him right down to where the wall sat in the dark and waited, painful and vast and made of not-wanted, not-looked-for, not- _for-_ you. There was no forgetting that. There was no _free_ from that and Faith Seed might have been strong but Rachel Jessop wouldn’t look that in the eye twice.

He could feel that, sure as anything.

“Nah, she’s got him,” Earl said, grim. “But the Cougars, these are good people. They’re fightin’ to take this place back from her. If we keep at it, we might stand a chance at pulling Burke out of her clutches.”

Sure, why not, Rook was going to say, and then something Earl had mentioned struck him. So instead he asked, “angels?” and Earl got to his feet.

 

 

 

Angels were Faith’s peggies, Faith-specific peggies, and there was a green haze around their heads where her claws were sinking deep into them.

They were also in agony.

Rook watched with binoculars from the high prison wall, behind the sheets of corrugated tin set up as poor bullet shields, and he watched a man in coarse white clothes shriek and wail with his eyes gone red, clawing at his own temples and lashing out hard every time someone came near him. The veins of his arms and face were distended, hurt-red and twisted, and he looked like he wanted to die but couldn’t. Looked like he wanted to kill someone, just for not suffering like he did.

“The Angels are all Bitten,” Virgil said from beside him, voice soft with misery. The left side, the Bite side, just in case he’d missed it. “She’s got them so far gone on bliss that there’s no helping them, but we haven’t been able to find where she’s keeping it.”

“Everywhere,” Rook said, binoculars still tracking the wounded man, the screaming man, too far gone to know how to die. Barrels and crates of bliss were everywhere, after all.

“Not the normal kind. We can’t find any proof yet – she’s keeping it real close to the chest – but that’s not what bliss does. Bliss, it does the opposite of this, we’ve gotta be missing something.”

“Didn’t for me,” Rook pointed out because people seemed to think he didn’t know what he was talking about. “That looks about right for what the bliss did to me.” He lowered the binoculars, pushed his sunglasses over his still-hurting eyes.

“Maybe so,” Virgil said instead of disagreeing outright. “But there’s no reason for the same drug to do something like that. I have _never_ seen something like that. Doc Lindsey-,”

“The vet?” Rook interrupted.

Virgil cleared his throat. “Yeah, but he’s doctor for everything now, well he says he might be able to help if we get a sample. Of the Angel version, though something for the normal bliss would be good too. Unless they really are the same,” he added doubtfully.

Rook lowered his eyes to the naked skin of Virgil’s neck, unscarred above his collar. People could take it two ways, the reminder that not everyone had the same insides, the same rooms tucked up inside their head with room for others. They’d take it quick, embarrassed and red, apologising and flustered because oh god, they weren’t _those_ people, they didn’t judge people that way. Or they’d take it personally, like the scars they didn’t have were being used against them, making them Less Than even though they were the normal ones, the vast majority and so very, very embarrassed to be reminded at how easy it had come.

“Samples, huh,” he said instead, and he put the binoculars back in his satchel, picked up the baseball bat from the ramparts and swung it low and easy in his hand. “I’ll be right back.”

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Lindsey hadn’t thanked him for the unconscious Angel, her gouged and wounded eyes still weeping even in sleep, which was pretty rude after the effort Rook had gone to to get her. He’d made his way through the forest to where the man had been and found her weeping into a fern growing from a fallen log instead, found her stronger than he’d expected. Mad with agony and screaming so loud it almost deafened him, her arms swinging with hysterical strength like one of those mothers on the news who could pull a car off a baby. In the end Boomer had taken her by the leg and Rook had just swung the bat into her temple, twice, once more than had killed men with his kind of strength behind it and she’d gone down with a wail like her heart was breaking.

He’d looked around for something to tie her up with while Boomer waited sitting on the woman’s chest, and in the end he’d just tucked her under his arm and carried her back to a cell while Earl Whitehorse laughed at Virgil’s look of shock, told him he’d done a good job. Reached up to pat him on the back like Rook was his son who’d made quarterback, proud of him, snickered about how Rook had got her back there under one arm like a handbag, _simple as that, boys_.

“Oh yeah,” a dark-haired woman called Tracey who looked too much like Hudson, made his heart hurt with guilt, said. “We’ll all just go out, tuck a peggie under each arm and bring them back for science hour – I can’t even reach the top shelf, Sheriff, this guy would have to duck to _see_ it.”

Rook coughed and pulled the cell door shut with a clang while Earl laughed and laughed and laughed like it had been bottled up and suddenly punctured, let loose. When Rook turned around Virgil, thinning hair and glasses and a warm expression that screamed people-person, he pressed a badge with a cougar’s screaming face on it. There was one pinned proudly to his own vest, and one beneath Earl’s Sheriff’s badge. “Welcome to the Cougars, son,” Virgil said. “Boy, are we glad to see you.”

Earl patted him on the shoulder again. “I’ve got a laundry list of places the peggies wouldn’t want you to stick your nose into, Rook. But this is a good start. Meet me in the planning room, we’ll get down to brass tacks.”

“I’m not going in there,” Doctor Lindsey said faintly, staring into the cell where the Angel was starting to twitch.

Tracey narrowed her eyes. “Oh really?”

 

 

 

 

Earl hadn’t been kidding about the list, and after days and days had passed Rook felt like he was carrying the wet-earth smell of the Henbane River inside his nose, his veins, trapped against his skin by damp clothes while he lay on the riverbank with a sniper rifle to pick peggies off their raised hunting platforms. He was getting tanned and littered with little scars, branded by some bigger ones, and he’d gotten better at shaving with a knife than he had with one of those finicky razors from the gas station but he still needed a haircut. He wasn’t getting as tired (still Tired though, neverending) and his muscles were hurting less each morning, getting stronger and leaner and making it all easier, the shape of him changing and making the war for Hope County permanent, space for it to live in him if it ever ended.

Rook cleared out the Mastodon Geothermal Park on the fifth day and after a guilty look around, stripped down to enjoy hot water for the first time in weeks, only to have to lunge for a stick and chase down a horrified, mortified peggie who’d come stumbling out of the trees high on bliss and just stared (and _stared_ ) and since there was a lot of Rook to take in even with his clothes on, he hadn’t gotten much of a headstart even before Boomer had barked and joyously sent him sprawling.

Rook stuck to the cold showers at the prison after that.

He’d sort of expected Faith to talk to him, to come after him with words and hands like John had – maybe not quite like John had, who never had come down on whether he wanted to fight Rook or – well. But she didn’t, didn’t say a word. Just sent stronger and stronger fighters, Angels, those priestesses of hers with their faces painted with symbols in red and black and scars, and if he didn’t know better he would have thought she was afraid (would have thought Rachel Jessop wasn’t so far down after all).

He didn’t have better luck with replacing his medication, though (his luck ever-unchanging), Faith’s territory having fewer homes to rummage through than John’s and all of them already ransacked. His nightmares were no longer just sometimes, were all times, were every time he closed his eyes and came to with Needles in more motion than usual, frantic and all edges _every night_ and all Rook wanted to do was reach out and hold him still, hold him down until the struggling stopped and he just _took a breath_ , until Rook remembered he’d seen Needles before and that wasn’t what would happen. That wasn’t his life to live, and Knife should have done it but he almost never saw him anymore. The third seemed to make it better, just a little, but Needles was railing against something and Rook woke bitter with helplessness he shouldn’t have felt because he shouldn’t have _cared_ that he didn’t know why Needles was running himself ragged, because Needles would never know or give a shit about him.

He set another field of bliss on fire the next day, which was how Rook had come to deal with stress (how the _hell_ was he going to live after this) and when he came back, Tracey had snapped and finally put that poor Angel out of her misery while Lindsey told Virgil, over and over, that it was the bliss, it was the same bliss that frayed and flayed them open, and Virgil looked at Rook’s Bites with a fresh kind of horror because here was another thing that didn’t come easy for them.

All this and Rook’d been eyeing the hundred-foot statue of Joseph with a kind of lazy, speculative gleam when Earl had come up beside him and told him he was sorry to ask, but there was one more thing. Always one more thing, they both knew, and sometimes Earl took his sunglasses off to rub damp eyes when he pointed Rook like a gun and told him to shoot, Virgil would hold onto his shoulders with a smile tight and the corners of his eyes tense. Rook would nod and look back to the map, not sure how to respond to being put up as a martyr of necessity, selling his soul to save the county and leaving ashes in his wake. Especially since they all knew but they didn’t know, not really.

Didn’t get how it could be sort of fun.

Rook had learned at a very early age that he had to play gentle, think gentle, because hard thoughts could make big hands deadly and full of mistakes and while for most _big_ was relative, for him it quickly wasn’t. He had to tuck his elbows in and bend down to hear, had to play carefully and _think gentle_ because he didn’t want to break things, not really, even when the walls closed in and he really really did. It made him smaller inside his own skin, shortened his reach and gentled his grip in his mind, where it counted, and then the helicopter had gone in flames and he’d needed reach, needed savage fingers and the weight he could throw behind a punch and he could feel himself growing again for the first time in years, filling up the space he’d long left vacant in his own body to not loom over others. The high-hurt note in his mind was still there, trembling and warbling each time he hurt someone and it felt just a little easier when it had already _started_ easy, but Rook knew his nightmares and this was a horror for waking, was something he’d just have to live with like the Henbane in his skin.

Sheriff Whitehorse knew Rook didn’t like hurting the peggies, shooting down weak-lonely people or crashing through them like barriers, they all knew, so they apologised and thanked him too much and felt better when he went red and hung his head, sunburnt from gratitude and skin hot with it. He didn’t say anything because they knew that and they weren’t wrong, they knew the score, but the thing was that Rook hated _hurting_ but god, he loved fighting.

 

 

 

Which made the next _one more thing_ kind of a weird one.

 

 

 

Rook had been steadily mowing his way through the better part of a loaf of bread in toast form when the radio at the end of the mess table came to life, startling Lindsey into putting his elbow into the rare, precious butter and making him a table full of enemies.

“Anyone there? This is Mabel, somebody answer!”

Earl reached out and answered it with practised ease, brushing crumbs out of his handlebar moustache. “This is Sheriff Whitehorse, over.”

A sigh of relief, then, “Peaches is hurt, she’s hurt real bad! You gotta come help!”

“Aw, hell,” Earl sighed, pushing his plate of toast aside. Butter-free, because his wife back home worried about his cholesterol and old habits died hard even when the rest of you was meant to be dead already.

“Who the hell is Peaches?” Tracey asked suspiciously, paused in cleaning her pistol, all of them tactfully ignoring Boomer’s predatory sniffing from below Earl’s abandoned toast.

“Peaches’s her cat.”

“Her _cat_?” Tracey asked, putting her weapon down leaning onto her hands over the table. “We’re fightin’ a war out here and she wants help for her _cat_? Gimme that radio.”

“Cougar,” Rook corrected. Mabel didn’t have a licence but had been selling tickets to see her, say hello to Peaches the (only sort of) domesticated mountain lion. She also had a screech that could strip paint. He and Earl exchanged looks, Earl’s lips twitching. They’d used to draw straws to see who had to go and remind her that she was breaking the law (still) and needed to file for an exotic animal licence. Drew straws to see who’d get chased out of there while she screamed at them ( _three-hundred-fucking-dollars who the hell do you think I am to be paying that_ ) and that last time, they’d rigged it for Staci, because he had big brown eyes like his Spanish mother when he wasn’t glaring daggers and she did have a soft spot for a Latin man (her words). And usually declared it right at Pratt while he glared at Rook from the squad car because he was from _Missoula_ ( _you racist bastards_ ) but they exploited the shit out of that soft spot anyway.

He also had a nice ass, and Mabel wouldn’t let anyone forget it.

“What’s happened to her, Mabel – peggies?’ Lindsey asked, taking hold of the transmitter, probably grateful to be in his element instead of wrist-deep in someone’s abdomen.

“Are you kidding? She’s made mincemeat of any of those mayo-nnaise idiots who come sniffing around. It’s the god-damn _bees_.”

This left the improvised mess hall in silence. Processing first that (Mean) Mabel had gotten through slaughters that had left their county in ashes around them, left people flayed and nailed to trees, because her illegal pet cougar had a taste for cultists. Then the second, being,

“Bees?” Lindsey repeated. “Say again?”

“She went and stuck her face in a log after some chickenshit peggie and got herself a mouth full of bees!” Mabel screeched at him. “She can’t breathe, you asswipe, now are you gonna come help her or not? You’re a vet, ain’t you?! I know that’s you, Charles Lindsey!”

Lindsey looked helplessly at Earl, who shrugged. “Hell, if she’s got a peggie-eating cougar, the least we could do is give her health and dental for her service.”

“What are we, Canadian,” Rook murmured, but no one seemed as amused by the joke as he was.

Tracey wasn’t amused, but then again, she rarely was. “That place is miles away and he’s our only doctor! He stays here!”

“I think we’ve got an opportunity, here, if she’s killin’ them as easy as Mabel says,” Earl argued right back. They were both squared off, when,

“I’ve never seen a cougar up close,” Rook said idly just as Boomer lunged up and stole Earl’s plate, and that was that.

 

 

Lindsey wasn’t an ideal travelling companion, him not being good with guns or particularly stealthy, but he was at least willing to talk to Rook while Tracey sulked and brought up the rear. Going somewhere to _help_ made the sun feel a bit brighter, the leaves a bit greener and the rugged path that bit easier to walk, so Rook was cheerful in helping Lindsey slide down rocky crags and splash through streams, even hummed a little when he snuck up to stab a peggie in the neck and Lindsey gagged theatrically behind him.

It was a long walk, especially with company, miles and miles and Lindsey wasn’t going to be fun on the way back so Rook was sort of already planning to part ways and leave escort duty to Tracey for that, who could handle herself and who Lindsey wouldn’t dare bitch to. He was still mulling it over when they arrived – Mabel was waiting out front and chainsmoking her way through what had to be a dwindling supply of cigarettes by the time they got up the rise, not that that stopped her from flicking the rest of one away in that fun little antagonistic way she had. “About time you showed up,” she said in her smoker’s grind voice. “Hurry it up, she’s inside,” and Mabel surely was Mean Mabel but she loved that damn cougar, so Rook picked up the pace just so Lindsey would too.

Mabel had cleared off one of the desks in the administration building, old computer tossed carelessly onto the floor, and Peaches was stretched out on it, miles of gold stretched over a powerful body and Rook turned to immediately lock Boomer outside because he had that feeling Boomer would have met the love of his life as soon as he saw her and there was a time for that kind of enthusiasm. Her enormous face was swollen until it looked more like one of those soft toys of a cougar, all button eyes and sewn-in mouth, and even Tracey looked sympathetic for all that she hadn’t wanted to come.

Lindsey set his kit down and pulled those blue latex gloves on as Mabel set up camp by the door, ignoring Boomer’s plaintive whines (Mean Mabel still, after all) and Rook crossed the room to look at Peaches, whose breaths sounded painful, sounded like they were killing her. She must have heard him, made one of those hurt-helpless noises animals made when it was really bad, the kind that just pitched it right down to the instincts where you were still an animal too inside, made you hurt a little as well. Rook’s fingers twitched with the sudden need to reach out. He really was too soft (gentle giant, Nancy said, fucking _Nancy_ ).

“Deputy, hold her down,” Lindsey said, eyes flicking between the cougar and Rook fast enough Rook could see the exposed nerves twitching under his glasses, all messages set to “predator, run”.

He couldn’t blame him. Peaches was big for a cougar, and not a dog who’d eaten keys like Lindsey was probably used to. So Rook got close, crooning at her wordlessly because he couldn’t help himself around anything big and fuzzy and stroking his hand down over Peaches’ shoulder, down her side, putting pressure downwards with his hands like cats liked. Peaches made that noise again and he made one too of sympathy, involuntary, and Lindsey hesitated just once before he pulled a needle out of his kit.

Rook could feel compact muscle under both his hands when she wheezed and knew it’d be a close thing if she surprised him with violence, kept his guard up, but Peaches submitted to needles with just stroking her soft sides and more noises pitched at that same animal level, more _I hurt_ and _help_ , until Lindsey stepped back and dropped a needle into the tray with shaking hands. “I think that should do it?” he said, and Mabel startled both of them when she jabbed her cigarette into the ashtray by the door hard enough to rattle the ceramic.

“You askin’ or tellin’?” she snapped. “Her face looks all messed up to me still.”

Lindsey shot Rook a look. Rook could see it out of the corner of his eye. But they hadn’t drawn straws, had they, and Staci’s ass wasn’t within distraction range so he just pretended not to notice and kept pressing his hands over Peaches while her chest rose and fell, strained but warm and strong and alive. “Well,” Lindsey answered, “it’s not a miracle cure, it’ll take time for the swelling to go down. But I’ve eased it enough for her to breathe in the meantime, and I think she’s going to be fine.”

Mabel sighed, a shudder in it, and Rook kept his eyes on Peaches still because a hard woman wouldn’t want him to see her vulnerable, and her voice was a little thick when she said, “I’ve had it, you can take her with you when you get out of here. More trouble than she’s worth.”

“Now, Mabel, this wasn’t her fault,” Lindsey protested, but she cut him off with a scoff.

“I’ve made up my damn mind. You take her with you, boy,” she said more directly to Rook and he knew it, he _knew_ she’d never bothered to remember his name when Staci had been right there, “you clearly want her more’n I do.”

And he did. God, he did, and Peaches was rumbling under his hands like a motorcycle and maybe it wasn’t Boomer who was going to fall in love as soon as he saw her because Rook couldn’t stop stroking her big ears, velvet-soft and twitching gently. He felt guilty for second when he remembered Boomer, heard him still scritching at the door. Then he remembered how he had let Boomer share his sleeping bag every time it got so much as chilly and had almost taken a bullet getting one of those dog-brushes because the burrs irritated his big paws and Rook hated seeing him (his good boy) with his head hung low, and maybe Rook was just a sucker overall and it was even across the board for Peaches and Boomer both.

“You’re not seriously taking the cougar,” Tracey muttered to him when Mabel went outside to light up again, “you’re not seriously going to be that guy with a hunting dog and a _mountain lion_ getting all weird in the mountains,” and Rook just hummed because yeah, he really was and it was going to be amazing.

“I’ll head on to the lumber mill from here,” he said, “after I spend the night, Dutch said they’ve got people in cages,” and Tracey kicked him as hard as she could in the shin because she knew an escape when she saw one and Lindsey was already saying his feet were sore.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from The Hobbit, because Bilbo and Peaches now have very similar feelings about bees. And yes, Rook is a thousand feet tall and killing people left-right-and-center and he lets his dog eat off the table because he's his Good Boy, why do you ask.


	6. never saw a wild thing

 

Rook did spend the night, on the floor because he took one look at Mabel’s couch and no, he wouldn’t have to bend at the knees to fit that, he’d have to bend himself in half. So he rolled out his sleeping bag next to the table instead, the one with Peaches on it and let Boomer in to sniff around. With Rook’s hand on his collar for introductions because he had been right and Boomer had gone right for their new cougar with a graceless joy, and even restrained he had spent the night licking at the enormous pads of Peaches’ paws where they were raw and sore from clambering over rocks for peggies. Peaches put up with this with a distinctly feline long-suffering grace, probably because she was still drugged, and Rook fell asleep between Boomer and the table just listening to their breathing, he fell asleep something like peaceful.

He didn’t stay that way by the time the wall slid into prominence out of the dark, by the time he had fallen down to the abyss inside it lived in (him), but Needles wasn’t there and the third could haunt him as much as he liked as long as he never saw him, so Rook woke up feeling better than he had in weeks. Mabel even scrounged up some coffee for him while she patted Peaches’ purring body, the cougar’s face shrunk down to its beautiful, elegant shape, and in return he pretended not to see her sniffling when Peaches pushed up into her hands. She told him she was going to head down to that goddamn County Jail if it was all that, and that he had to take care of her girl because she was just too much for Mabel to be bothered with, always hungry for food and water and attention (love-hungry, starving). Which sounded a lot like Mean Mabel was also Getting-Older Mabel and Peaches was the only sort of domesticated mountain lion who wasn’t going to stop killing peggies, had to have someone to go with her instead of waiting at home and not knowing if she’d come back.

Rook didn’t know about that but he knew about waiting, so he let Mabel bitch him out while she wrote down as much about taking care of Peaches as she could fit onto the back of a poster, and then he rolled it up and set off with Peaches padding through the underbrush, circling, and Boomer at his heels. The sun was out, the birds were chirping and free of the low fog of bliss that seemed to saturate the earth of Faith’s district, the air seemed clean and cooling, pulling the poison out of his lungs. He felt a little better.

Not good. But better.

 

 

 

 

 _The Weak Have Their Purpose_ declared the long piece of sheet metal on the top of the lumber yard ( _meat_ written on the doors). It was stark and worn in the sunlight, all rusted joints and tarnished steel of a lumbar yard run for ten years too long. Populated with peggies and occasional clangs of boots on metal walkways, cage doors hit carelessly with rifles passing by.

It wasn’t the kind of outpost Rook was used to – it was organised, the peggies were moving with purpose like they had _patrol routes_ , they had sightlines and radios that looked like they were even in use, which Rook had honestly never seen amongst peggies before. The narrow metal cages clustered together under the administrative offices, near the machinery, used to be cages to keep cut wood and were now populated by worn-down people (more often cut than not), thin and keeping to their separate corners like they couldn’t trust each other just as much as the peggies. Jacob liked to brainwash people, liked to put enemies inside your friends, Dutch had told Rook when he’d told him about Jess ( _she’s my niece, Rook, just – just look for her if you can_ ) the archer who might want to help, and Boomer barked once around the side for _peggie, one_. Rook stroked his hand down Peaches’ back and then pushed her haunches once, so she prowled around the side too and the sharp, cut-off yelp told him _peggie, none_.

Rook pressed the stock of his rifle to his shoulder, grinned even though it wasn’t a laughing matter, and took aim, because his new, improvised family was making him look lazy and he just couldn’t have that. But the peggies didn’t scatter when one jerked and sprayed blood, brains all over the wall, a neat shot just above the ear with a muffled _pop_. They closed ranks instead and drew in to the cages and they didn’t _react_ , they _responded_ and for words that started the same those were very different things.

So Rook had to stay back, couldn’t try explosives when they’d pulled themselves to defend within the tight range of cages holding hostages, holding Hope County in (weak, wide-eyed, waiting) and so he had to scrunch flat and lie out long along the ground, had to adjust his scope and hold his breath between shots.

They worked out where he was, they _found him_ after two of the eight had gone down, when they’d closed ranks again and started using hand signals – _hand signals_ – to send each other after him, which was roughly the point Rook started to get concerned. He ducked in time for the ground around him to erupt in gunfire, sending up a cloud of dust that he scrambled through to safety, to higher ground. He regrouped around the side of a shipping container and heard a high, screaming yowl, a spray of bullets and a peggie, screaming for his life and ending in a choked gurgle. He ran out around the side because there had been _six_ , six left and now fix but six with guns and both Boomer and Peaches out there, only to see Boomer sinking his teeth into a man’s throat and lifting his gun just in time to shoot the peggie’s friends coming in as back-up in the next, hands almost shaking on the handle with the shock of it all happening so fast, all so out of control.

Because Rook tended to go in fast, went in _cry havoc and_ the fucking rest but this wasn’t his pace, he hadn’t been _ready_ and he ducked, rolled, almost took a prisoner’s head off when he came up because a man had opened fire from the second-floor walkway with a submachine gun and Rook’s reflexes were set in too high a gear for the man stuck between them. He had to be grateful, he had to be _grateful_ when the civilian took the impacts, _rat-tat-tat_ shaking through him like an earthquake because the sight made him sick but meant he was alive to _be_ sick until Peaches clawed her way up to the second floor and took the man out, wrapped around him all claws and teeth and powerful jaws clamping shut.

The man’s choked gasping, insides outside and seeping through the walkway grate, broke the silence of the last six peggies down, no enemies left (one less friend), and Rook looked up to see the hostages standing if they could stand, sitting if they couldn’t but all pressed to their cage doors and waiting. Watching him.

Saved.

So he fisted his hands, flexed them until the shaking stopped because people didn’t get saved by men shaking with adrenaline, men terrified, that wasn’t what hope was made of and then he readjusted his gloves (worn through at the seams) and started letting them out.

“God bless you,” one man said before he could, other freed civilians starting to come out cautious, like it was another test. “Bless you,” he said, holding on too tightly, and Rook could see the naked gratitude in his eyes and had to look away.

When they were all free, stripping peggies of their weapons and taking over the radio, starting to whoop and cheer and feel cheerful again with the dizzy high of a noose breaking before you hung from it, Rook helped them carry the murdered hostage free. He had green eyes stuck open and blood starting to dry from his mouth, drooled down his neck and staining his shirt.

Massacred, not murdered, Rook thought, and it was funny how two words that started the same could mean very different things.

 

 

 

The people from the lumber yard had several things in common, all of them. They were all adults, they were all able-bodied and they’d all been taken from where Jacob’s hunters had killed the people around them who weren’t either.

They were all also – but this may have been incidental – furious.

It was suffocating, too much to be thanked by people who could have just as easily been between Rook and a bullet, by people who looked as guarded as they were grateful because Jacob, after all, put enemies inside of friends and Rook was a Very New Friend. So he climbed up while they started pulling people out of cages if they hadn’t been able to stand and walk out, splashing them with water if they didn’t rise and shouting ( _wake up, assholes, world’s not over yet_ ) and he braced his foot on the metal sign, a quick check below before he shoved it free with that groaning-tearing-shrieking pull of metal and heard it clatter on the walkway below (the weak have their purpose) and stood there in the breeze.

“So you’re the one,” the infamous Jess said when he jumped down to the ground in stages and approached her – instantly recognisable from Dutch’s description, from her Wanted poster, from late radio calls ( _my son won’t see me any more but Jess, she comes by, Jess, she hasn’t called in weeks_ ). Her hood was up and her dark hair long and free beneath it, coming out on either side of her neck. Her eyes were heavily shaded like Rook had seen some of the more survivalist hunters – pragmatism over optimism, Eli had told him once, grimly smearing something a little like kohl to protect his eyes before he’d slunk off through the trees after bright-brutal Jacob. “My uncle told me about you, before they got me. Heard you might be my kind of law man.”

Rook was pretty sure this was the same infamous Jess who’d gotten formally cautioned for leaving arrows imbedded in the sides of trucks that came up the No Heavy Vehicle road in the Whitetails, for scaring off the wildlife, so he wasn’t sure what that said about him. Then again, his pet cougar was letting out that chirping noise he’d seen in nature videos online ( _What You Don’t Know About Cougars!_ ) and hunting for Boomer through the cages and he had a sniper rifle with teeth painted on the side, so there were a lot of statements being made about Rook that he hadn’t really said out loud.

She looked at him with a glint in her eye, tilted her head back like a challenge and asked, “how’d you like to _really_ ruin Jacob-motherfucking-Seed’s day?” and charmed, because it had been so long since he’d heard that phrase (all uppercase, red pen on the form), Rook said yes.

Jacob Seed accused him of playing soldier on the radio afterwards while Rook gleefully burned the remainder of one of his lieutenant’s camps, Jess crying out in vindication and glee to see it go up in smoke. Honestly, it wasn’t a bad end to the day, even when Rook realised Jacob never had spoken to him directly before, and clearly didn’t know his name even when he told him _sit tight, deputy, my men are coming for you_ and Dutch radioed just to tell him to run like Rook wasn’t always listening, to all of it.

 

 

 

Shots to the leg were always in movies as The Injury, the one the male lead could take with a manly grunt and soldier on through, but Rook had shot a few people in the legs (arms, chests) over the past weeks and actually what happened was that they bled. They bled a lot all at once and then he caught up and took them out with a merciful shot to their bloodless faces, or with a knife if he had to because he could see the life pumping out through the hole in their leg and they may have been peggies, but they didn’t deserve to feel it drain all the way out.

So when Rook cried out and looked down to see an arrow in the leg on his way back to the lumber yard, alone, that was what he thought of. That drain, the plug pulled on the vascular system.

Something swum nauseating and hot from the wound, clogged and smothering in his veins. It made him sick and his legs wobbled, sight curling around the edges – or maybe the whole forest was, maybe it was too much for it too – and down he went, hands splayed out and holding him still but not holding him steady. Someone stepped into view in front of him, all red-black and face covered, a bow in hand. Rook tried to focus his eyes on them and they cocked their head at him, waiting for him to do the decent thing and go down.

Only it was starting to get easier to focus, wasn’t it, he just wasn’t _going down_. After a few seconds they started tensing as Rook failed to close that last inch to the ground, as his vision started steadying, the strength coming back to his arms enough to push him up a little further.

“I thought you hit him,” someone growled from behind, and,

“I did,” the one in front of him said, high and tight, “he’s much bigger up close, do I hit him again?”

“It’ll collapse his respiratory system,” which was an irony because the second man’s windpipe had been crushed by Rook’s jab before he could get anything else out. Pain and nausea made him surly, made him _mad_ and when he turned to face the one with the bow, it was seeping-smoking out of his eyes because how dare they, how _dare they_ think he was a dog to come to heel.

The hunter took a single hesitant step back and Rook took two long strides forward to close distance and then he had them by their throat against the tree, legs dangling and kicking out uselessly for purchase for a long moment. Kicking out once more at the end, then going limp. He held on for another moment before he let them go, sinking onto one knee because adrenaline was helpful but everything hurt that much more afterwards and his leg was really not happy about its new piercing. He reached over and after a second, managed to get the hunter’s belt free, set it down in front of him while he pulled out a first aid pack and unwrapped a thick packet of gauze. Then he had to be serious, so he reached down, gritted his teeth and yanked the arrow out, pressing the gauze to the spurting blood quickly and then twisting the belt hard around his thigh to force it hard against the wound. He was going to have to sew it up later, he knew, but it could wait until he was away from the corpses, away from where they must have told Jacob they’d spotted him.

 _Sew_. Sew his own leg up, Rook couldn’t even fix his socks. He wasn’t looking forward to making camp. He picked up the hunter’s bow and quiver, though, mostly out of spite and because maybe Lindsey could take a look at the arrows for him, and he made his way to the rock face to climb for higher ground amongst the pine trees, where he could be safe and surrounded by the forest again. But he was interrupted on the way, by,

“Hunters, report.”

Rook, breathing just on the edge of too hard, looked over to the bodies, crumpled where he’d cast them aside. There was a radio stained white and weatherworn on the hunter’s hip, and he staggered over to it and ripped it free to answer just after the man repeated himself, added, “do you have eyes on the target? Report.”

“Target here. I… what is it, ‘culled the herd’,” he said, mean with it, “isn’t that what you people do?”

“… excuse me?” the man on the other end said. He had a Minnesotan accent, of all things, polite and rounded and radioing to ask if they’d found Rook, were dragging him back like a trophy for Jacob to claw open.

“I said,” Rook told him, voice even and flat like a knife-blade, “you tell Jacob, I went ahead and culled his goddamn herd for him and you know what, while you’re at it,” he continued, voice getting deeper and starting to grind, guttural and loud and angry, _angry_ , “you ask him if that’s _all he’s got_ ,” and then he hurled the radio into the ravine just to watch it break apart on the rocks far below. Peaches came around a few seconds later and rubbed her enormous body against the back of his legs and almost threw him down after it, but he appreciated the show of support. “You wouldn’t have let them take me, would you guys?”

Boomer might have, for peanut butter, but he was sniffing around Rook’s injury and whining so that thought had clearly been unfair, had been the drugs rather than a reflection on his hungry boy’s character. “No, you wouldn’t have,” he decided, and stroked his head to calm him down (calm them both down) before he got moving again.

 

 

 

 

Rook had made camp under a natural overhang just before it started to rain, _pitter-patter_ turning to a rush, a smothering blanket of water drumming down and walling the camp off from the rest of the forest. He watched the water drench the trees around him and pool between tree roots, dripping down the top of the rock ledge keeping them dry and deciding fuck it, he was going to have to build a fire and accept he’d smell like wet dog and smoke  for the rest of his days. He managed to get it started and told himself it wasn’t purely to put off taking the belt off the wound, to give sewing one last try and risk the blood poisoning, putting his jacket over a nearby stone to dry warming his wet hands because obviously he’d need his circulation back if he was going to get down to business.

The rain hid the crackle, at first. But Rook had keen ears.

“ _Not bad, deputy,”_ Jacob’s rough voice said over the radio, said to the world at large because it turned out no Seeds cared how open a frequency was. _“There aren’t a lot of men who’d take that arrow and stay standing_.”

“Did a bit more than standing, asshole,” Rook muttered, not picking the damn thing up in favour of prying the belt loose. It was harder than it should have been because the blood had soaked into the leather and made it stiff, flaking off rust-brown into his hands when he eased it looser and looser, flesh around the wound starting to throb again in warning as he hissed through his teeth.

“ _But you can’t play soldier forever. You’re_ weak _. You’re getting tired, and you’re already bleeding_.” A sound like a huff. A canine kind of sound, low and pleased at the edges. “ _There’s blood in the water. We can taste it, deputy. We’re coming for you,”_ and Jacob didn’t say anything after that. Just left him in the growing darkness, behind his fortress of the downpour, beside the crackling fire and the bloodstained gauze he was pulling off the wound so he could try and finally get sewing on his list of skills.

 

 

-

 

 

It was a good thing he had, that he’d done better than totally botching it because he’d taunted when he shouldn’t have, Rook had really fucked up this time since, no, actually. That wasn’t all Jacob Seed had got.

Some time before dawn, when the rain had slowed to a drizzle, Boomer’s startled bark had woken him only a second before he had to roll into the embers from his own fire, arms up to shield his head, to protect his eyes and ears from the flash grenade that had hit the dirt by his face. It left him dazed, ears ringing and aching but not enough to keep him from kicking out when someone grabbed his leg, felt something give and gave him enough freedom to wriggle away, struggling out of his blanket. Peaches lunged into action and clawed the man out into the mud, hissing and yowling, knocking another man and sending his red-white-poison arrow wide and clattering off the rock by Rook’s shoulder. Rook yanked his pistol up and what took only a few seconds to finish left Rook trying to focus his eyes properly for hours, left him rubbing his ears because they felt divorced from his head after the grenade while the hot-copper smell of blood started to overpower the clean air the rain had left. Pooling by his jacket, pink in the puddles of water the man had brought in with him.

“Thanks, boy,” he said, letting Boomer bury himself in his lap even though he was more mud than dog, Peaches disdaining them in favour of licking herself clean by his bow and quiver.

 

 

 

 

No. Not all Jacob Seed had got. Not by a long shot.

 

 

 

 

Over the next week Rook got used to a kind of hypervigilance that made his nerves feel frayed and exposed, made him feel just a little like Needles and a little more like Knife, red-rage around the edges and ears constantly pricked because it felt like at least once a day, hunters so stealthy he never saw them coming found a way to see him, to come after him on silent feet with their poison arrows. He managed to stave them off with a combination of luck, stolen catnaps and a temper it was getting too easy to lose, a trained and conditioned brutality that sent him sprinting for them whenever he saw red flashing through the trees. Jacob’s messages didn’t get less smug, less certain, until after the sixth squad Rook had finished off by just kicking them off a nearby cliff while Peaches napped nearby, he didn’t hear anything at all. He chalked it up to a faulty reporting line – surely Jacob didn’t have eyes everywhere, surely he’d shot at least some of them by now he thought, ignoring the familiar flavour of a lie he told himself – so he kept going, hearing rumours that something at the F.A.N.G Centre was going badly wrong and needed his unique brand of help.

 

 

 

Open frequencies, the Seeds never seemed to care, could be heard by anyone. They were just screaming into the void for anyone and everyone and the Seeds, who never seemed to care (right up until they did).

 

 

 

Rook had gotten halfway back down the mountain when he realised why he wasn’t getting radioed by Jacob anymore, in much the same way you wouldn’t call someone on the phone when you could see them across a room and if you’d asked him, he’d have said he had gotten pretty good at fighting over the last week.

Until Jacob Seed.

Rook turned a corner and stopped because Peaches had stopped, had cut off her usual talkative chirping cold and he saw her lying on the ground, a dart in her neck when he cleared the rocks. His heart jumped to his throat and he had barely turned when Jacob lunged out of the shadows with impossible speed, came down on him like a hurricane (roofs ripped flying and the sky howling down) and Rook didn’t have time to plan his attack before he just had to react. The thing he had seen (but not felt yet) was that Jacob was _solid_ and Rook couldn’t shrug off the elbow to his solar plexus because it hit the air right out of him, just clapped his lungs tight-shut with the force of a semi and followed with a swift jab to the face that blinded him with a crunching pain, made him taste blood as it splattered across his face. He managed to bring his arm up, shove Jacob back into the rock wall hard enough he heard a crunch, that Jacob grinned at him dark-satisfied and came back at him twice as fast, and all-in-all Rook could be proud at the end of the day that he’d definitely broken Jacob’s ribs but it didn’t help him when he’d been laid flat in minutes.

Jacob caught his breath for a minute, and even lying on the floor and trying to breath through a bleeding nose, an aching mouth, Rook was glad to know that would have _hurt_ him, would have made his ribs feel the cage he put other people in. “You want something done right,” Jacob said through heavy breaths, sated like he’d fed on Rook’s shock and his pain, and Rook had been a fool to think Jacob would keep throwing good money after bad, would keep throwing trained men up against the meat grinder that Rook had shown himself to be. “I knew you had to go down hard,” Jacob hummed, crouching by his head in his combat boots with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, wiping Rook’s blood off his scarred hands with a rag while he just lay there gasping. “Fast. I’ve seen the way you hit. Felt it too, now. Couldn’t risk you getting up again.”

The savage high note in Rook’s brain was warping and trembling and he hadn’t known – known that all along it was fear and horror and a life of grief being pressured and pressurised somewhere deep-down into rage, and no. Jacob couldn’t. He’d have to put a bullet in him to take him down for good and Jacob must have seen it in his eyes because he chuckled with that rough-raw voice. Leaned closer, all old scars and red-red-red and said, “you’ll have to do better than that, _deputy_.”

Rook glared at him through the blood, felt his lip curl back from his teeth in a snarl and there was something satisfied and cold-clear in Jacob’s eyes, his river-heavy blues, and he just said, “good,” and picked up his rifle to slam the butt into Rook’s forehead, slammed the lights right off.

 

 

-

 

 

“You shouldn’t have come for me,” a voice Rook knew told him. He tried to open his eyes but they hurt, felt swollen shut, his whole face felt like he was back behind the video store while Davey just watched, didn’t give a shit about one kid on top of another (a Bitten) with a broken bottle and a bone to pick. “You should have run.”

“Staci,” Rook’s mouth said before his brain had caught up but his tongue felt thick, the word came out all wrong, and he caught a glimpse of a face that looked as bad as his felt before Staci yanked something tight around his wrists and darted away. Rook looked down and tugged, just a little, but his wrists were thick and all wrong too, and there was a slide of a dead stag projected on a wall, two men in front of him tied up as well. With bandannas, with rope, not the thick leather belts holding him.

Jacob Seed broke the light as the slides changed, walked in front of some bloody and indistinguishable image and told him, told all three of them that they had forgotten what it was like to be strong while wolves ran-snarled-bit their way through the slides behind him and Staci watched from the side, eyes kept on Jacob and his blue, blue eyes the whole time. Jacob told him, told them all that they had forgotten how to live and he pressed his hands to Rook’s trapped forearms, leaned into his space and said, “the Collapse is upon us,” with those blue, blue eyes looking into Rook’s and the rest of him dressed for a military exercise, and he whispered, “and when a nation of lives who have never known hunger or desperation descend into madness, we’ll be ready. We will cull the herd. Do what needs to be done,” with a wolf cast in light across his face, just to Rook (just for Rook) and Rook swayed forward just for a second, Jacob leaning back and standing there, pulling out a small wooden box and cranking the handle and,

 

_you’re my dream come true, my one_

_and only_

_you_

 

and the world splinter-fractured into redness and pain and the white lights of bliss, cracking him right open.

 

 

 

Get up. Kill. _Fight_.

 

 

 

Rook could do that.

 

 

 

 

Red-lit rooms turned to more red rooms turned to more, turned into the same maze over and over and eating itself, Rook chasing himself through it with guns and hands that were hurting because pulling a trigger quickly took strength and he was so tired, and in the end a man would shoot him and Jacob Seed would say, “again” and Rook would wake up in the same chair, and he heard,

kill

and he heard,

cull the herd,

and he saw the same two men struggling to their feet before him and wherever he turned he could feel but not see the wall. Felt it waiting behind spray-painted _weak_ and _we are the strong_ like a shark beneath the water, the silver under the glass of a mirror so he was dreaming, he _knew_ he was dreaming but he had to get up, he had to fight because this was never going to end and the war had finally taken root inside him because this was dreaming now. He got up again, and again so they could shoot him down in this maze again, and again, walls appearing and disappearing until he didn’t use his eyes to see, just the words

kill, cull the herd,

and muscle memory. A peggie in army fatigues dropped down from a broken wall, landed hard on Rook’s ribs and he didn’t shoot him – the faceless peggie hit him, over and over, weeping and wailing like he was trapped too and maybe he was. Trapped inside Rook, where the nightmares lived, his lungs filling with blood.

 

 

 

Rook woke up in the chair again.

Someone shook his arms roughly, but there was no one there when he opened his eyes. Rook was already doing what he always did, ears pricked and whole body listening (love-hungry and desperate all the way down) so he was trying to stand as heard Jacob’s voice overhead, he heard,

kill

and he heard,

cull the herd

and when he tried to stand someone shoved him back down and that was new, except for how it wasn’t. Shoved him back down so he’d get up so they could shove him down again. Story of his goddamn life.

The hands around his biceps gripped harder, shaking him again, shaking him so hard he bit his tongue and bloodied his mouth with the hot-copper taste of it. The muffled howling of his nightmares in his ears and he couldn’t move his hands to cover them. He was so tired of listening but he didn’t know how to do anything else so he heard,

kill

and he heard,

cull the herd which one _are_ you say your name, what’s your fucking _name_

and when he tried to stand there really was someone standing over him, faceless and blurred, their hands on his arms to hold him down. He tried again, and again, and the howling of the dream got so loud his teeth were rattling with it. Or maybe gunfire was waiting for him still, on pause in the world he’d left outside.

“I think I’m dying,” he slurred, and fuck it felt so good to finally say it out loud. There were gunshots behind his eyes and hollowpoints in his fingertips and he was deaf with it, the rattle of spent casings and the roar of flames that had burnt their way into him but weren’t warm at all where it counted, the nightmare starting to disintegrate around him.

_NO,_

he heard, felt Knife, felt blood and sand and angryangry _raging **help** less_ as the walls broke down and fled him, and he closed his eyes and woke up to a dry mouth and the flaky-sticking feeling of blood crusted down the side of his face and neck where they were pressed to the floor, all of him cast sideways in the cold light of day and still tied to the chair where it was tipped over.

“None of them are alive,” a very incorrect man said from somewhere in the bloodied room, Rook rolling his burning eyes and craning his neck to see the man’s combat boots taking him over the corpse near him, splayed over the ground with flies on his sightless eyes. “Eli, there’s no point.”

“I said, _check them all_ ,” Mister Thursdays himself growled, and after some grumbling Rook felt blunt fingers press under his jaw.

“… Holy shit,” the man breathed, and Rook sighed. “Eli, he’s alive!” called the man, who might still have been incorrect but would never know either way.

Eli came over fast, barking out orders. “Get him up, get him up now!”

“How the hell am I supposed to – you can _see_ him, can’t you, like all of him,”

A radio crackled. “Eli! Seed and his men are coming down the pass, a whole fuckin’ army! Haul ass!” Hands dug hard under his armpits and Rook groaned with protest. He was too big to just drag around. He was a grown-ass man and then some. He had enough grown-ass for about two on average, it wasn’t fucking _dignified_.

“Oh, get the hell out of the way,” Eli snapped, taking over on Rook’s left side and helping lift him easier, but after a second it just let Rook get his feet under him properly and push out of their grip. Stagger hard enough that he had to put his weight down on Eli, who took it like a champ but who let out a pained stream of curses.

“There’s a fucking cougar in the lobby!” a man screamed, high-hysterical, and Rook tilted his head back, felt his neck crack and groaned.

“Hold it,” he called, voice strangled and rough, “she’s with me.”

“Put her in the truck,” Eli decided, “her and the dog. I want everyone out of here in two minutes, or as far as I’m concerned, we’re giving Jacob a free meal. Whitetails, hustle!”

 

 

 

 

Rook had enough time to sit in the back of Eli’s truck (amphibious, called the Turtle, better loved than most children and no he _didn’t_ have the right class of licence, why don’t you go fuck yourself officer) for a while with his eyes closed, enough to start to doze and feel annoyed, feel interrupted when he was pulled out and dragged down a long, difficult trail. Looping up and around and doubling back until he was dizzy with it, until he was pushed down through a cold steel staircase in the ground and had the doors slammed heavy-shut behind him.

A blonde woman came stalking up to meet them while Rook’s eyes adjusted to the dim, took in her wide hips in khakis and her face set in distrust. “Eli, what the hell?! I can’t believe you brought him back here!”

 _Him_ was Rook, he assumed, but he beelined for the decontamination sink because _him_ had a mouth that tasted like he’d swallowed more blood than he ever had water, like he’d bitten down on a heart or something internal red-raw that bled between his teeth. So he was gargling tinny water for most of their conversation, cupping more in his hand to splash over his face and not caring how much of it spilled down his shirt, closing his eyes and enjoying the coolness. A familiar young man (Spread Eagle, not drinking but squirrelly when Rook looked at him) came up with a deep metal box, something to keep records in but just then filled with water, and with a nervous smile put it down by Rook’s feet so Peaches and Boomer could crowd around it together and start noisily enjoying it.

Rook tried to give him a smile but the kid just winced in sympathy – Rook ran his tongue over a stinging hurt in his lip and tasted fresh blood, which seemed ridiculous because surely he’d bled enough – and then he ran off the way he’d came.

Fair, Rook had to give him. He’d never been a fan of blood in his teeth either. He turned to watch the blonde woman stride back past him, shoulder-checking him on the way and only sort of bouncing off in what was honestly a pretty impressive display of determination over physics. “That’s Tammy,” Eli told him, taking his bow from his shoulder and putting it by the door. “She’ll take some getting used to.”

Rook nodded. “Good to see you, Eli,” he said, and Eli nodded back, a quick show of mutual respect before he gestured. Rook bent down because he was tired and not thinking clearly and Eli smacked him right in the ear.

“What did I say about Jacob _motherfucking_ Seed?!” Eli roared and yeah, Rook had had that one coming so he settled in with a contrite expression for what he thought might be a long conversation.

 

 

 

The blonde’s name was Tammy, the kid’s name was Wheaty and Eli managed to cram that information between colour-coded diagrams of the Seed family’s activities and how his complaints factored in.

Helpfully the chart also had a description of Jacob’s operations and where he was likely holding Staci, so Rook took this gracefully while sucking down ice chips between his cracked lips and humming at the right times. Halfway through the half-lecture half-dressing-down, Tammy left the room for the radio and came back a good thirty minutes later, which was convenient because Eli was losing steam by that point and had started just whacking Rook on the shoulder with a magazine, which he’d made Rook sit down on one of the beds for. They had a short conversation by the door, Eli rolling and stretching his shoulder because Rook was very solid to hit, even with a magazine, and in the end curiosity got the better of him so he hauled himself up to join them, asked Tammy what they had been talking about when Eli went to check on the radio himself.

Tammy smiled. She sort of looked like a wolverine when she did, though Rook would never tell her that. Small, sharp teeth in a narrow mouth. “Our dear Jacob wasn’t happy we raided his precious mind-fuck farm,” she said, satisfied. “We’d set it to burn so the smoke could cover our exit, but he tore the place to pieces before the fire was even out. Dragged the bodies out and threw a little tantrum, howling like one of his goddamn dogs. Never seen anything like it.”

Rook hummed. “That’s not very _disciplined,_ ” he said, because he thought mean might get him further with Tammy than just direct.

“Nope,” she said, popping the end of the word. “Bright side, you might get a few days of peace since the bodies weren’t in any shape to be ID’d. Made sure of that. I still don’t trust you, but anything that puts that kind of look on Jacob Seed’s face is good in my book. You must’ve really pissed him off.” She then pulled back and eyed him, and said the one thing that could have made them instant friends after the reception she’d given him.

“You need to shower. It’s this way, but be quick. Hot water’s limited.”

 

 

 

Rook was sitting in a fresh change of clothes – Eli bought them in crates at the discount store, but dark plaid and khakis were better than nothing – and was trying to button the plaid over a slightly too-tight singlet while Tammy spoke at length on the virtues of torture, kind of an odd habit for a former school teacher, and trying not to scratch at the fresh bandages around his arms, hands, midriff. The sutures on his face that were holding a wide gash closed over his nose. This was the picture they painted when Eli came in for round two.

He entered with the same effect his complaints once had. They had always put a real dampener on things.

“Bad news,” Eli said with an expression about as grim as usual but that made Tammy tense up, brace for it. “Jacob’s little tantrum ain’t over. I thought he’d withdraw once he found out he was too late but they’re out in force even more, letting the Judges out near every outpost they can find. Whatever you’ve been up to with the other Seeds,” he added to Rook, “they must have wanted you real bad.”

“But the bodies,” Tammy protested. “There’s no way he knew the deputy didn’t burn with the others. Unless,” she started, shooting Rook a narrow look but cut off by Eli growling.

“I’ve been on the radio to Dutch. It’s no secret that Joseph wanted to bring the deputy in, make an example. Lucky you, officer. My guess is that Jacob’s on the shitlist and big brother isn’t used to that, that’s more the younger one’s purview. So he’s taking it out on every poor soul he can find, mad as a cut snake.”

Tammy bristled. “So we’ve gotta get out there, send a message, tell him that he can’t just,”

Eli slammed his tin cup of coffee down and it sloshed up over the lip, sending the smell of instant-coffee-bitter through the air. “Tammy, damnit, will you just listen to me?!”

She closed her mouth but folded her arms sullen, and Eli shook his head, let it slide. Eli Palmer, Mister Thursdays, the guy who fed raccoons because he liked their shifty little eyes (liked how they were getting away with something) and head of a militia, god help them all. “Seed’s going all out, provoking a fight. We try and take him head-on and he’ll narrow in on us, trap us like rats and smoke us out. That’s exactly what he wants.”

Tammy faltered. A string in her fraying, a little, since hope and helpless didn’t sit comfortably together. “We can’t just do nothing,” she said, even though she knew they could, knew they all could. Knew that was the easiest thing, even when it felt hard. Do something and die or do nothing and live and tell yourself that was worse, because that was the luxury the living had and the dead didn’t. Making something complicated that seemed pretty simple to Rook.

Tammy stormed out and slammed the door behind her, leaving Rook and Eli alone. “And you, deputy,” Eli said, turning to look at Rook. Guilty, heavy eyes.

“I’ve gotta go,” Rook said, because of course he did. The rage Jacob was lashing out with when Rook had just had the nerve to up and _die_ without his permission, that’d be nothing if Jacob found out he’d been rescued. Escaped. That Jacob had failed even more spectacularly and had his prisoner taken by the _Whitetails_ , because Jacob had that light inside that when you got real close, looked like muzzle-flare, looked like a forest fire. He’d reduce mountains to rubble if he thought he had to and right now Eli was annoying but if Jacob knew he’d snatched Rook then Eli, well. He’d become A Problem, the next mountain in Jacob’s way ( _my one and only you_ ).

“Give the heat a chance to die down,” Eli said. “We could sure as hell use you. But not now. For now, you’ve gotta get out of here.”

Rook nodded and went to go get his satchel where Boomer had dragged it (and Peaches had taken residence on top of it) but Eli stopped him, looking just a little horrified. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” and surely they’d just covered this, Rook didn’t need reminding this was another door closed. But then, “you’re falling apart, y’ damn fool, you can stay the night. Unless you’d rather keel over, make it real easy for a Judge to eat your stubborn ass.”

Eating ass had come to mean something very different since Eli had soaked up his contextual slang, but Rook was so startled that he just stared at him.

Eli reached up to push him back down onto the mattress on the floor. “Get some rest, head out once it gets dark,” he said gruffly. “Oh, and one more thing.”

Rook sat silent and stared at Eli rummaging through his eighty pockets, one for every complaint he’d ever filed and had ignored against Jacob Seed, and Eli came out with a small white bottle of pills,

 _the pills_ ,

and then he held it out to Rook easy. Like it was nothing.

“This is you, right,” Eli said, hand just out there between them with an impossible thing on it because Rook didn’t talk about the nightmares, Rook took the two-hour drive for his prescription because of That Conversation, _this_ conversation. “Your kind of Bitten.”

Rook looked up at Eli’s face, trying to understand because everyone knew Eli’s soulmate had been his brother, his platonic better self, had died in Vietnam and Eli wasn’t _Bitten_ like him, and the older man just sighed. “You were good, kid. But I’ve been around one too many times and there may not be many with pills like these but well, you all got that hurting look. Right down to the quick. You gonna take them or not?”

Rook took them and Eli left him to it, turned the light out on his way, and Rook sat in the dark and thought of a night without the wall while Boomer sat on his shins and Peaches propped him up for behind.

 

 

He didn’t sleep.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jacob be honest, you don't know how to use powerpoint and at this stage, you're too scared to ask. It's okay, big guy.
> 
> Chapter title from D.H. Lawrence


	7. the evening splits in half

Rook’s eyes were burning, but he couldn’t close them. He’d been awake for so long, Awake for weeks longer and the walls kept flashing red when he tried to relax, sitting with his back to the wall just to know for sure it was there and lacing up his boots before he finally went to set out the next morning.

He smiled dimly at his feet, lips quirked at the lines of worn leather and the dirt trodden into them, a small and twisted thing. He’d used to sleep in on his days off, staying in bed until he got a series of increasingly angry, all-caps texts from Staci, who hated going to the hardware store on his own and had been refinishing his kitchen, needed someone who could carry everything while he argued with the pop of a mom’n’pop franchise ( _no_ I don’t need _my boyfriend_ to talk to you, _who the hell do you think you are_ ). But Rook didn’t sleep in anymore, couldn’t anymore, so he tied and tugged the laces tight and when he stood he touched the pocket of his cargo pants, felt the pill bottle inside just to feel it there. He’d sealed it inside a waterproof wrapping the night before, then done it again, and again, until it couldn’t be read anymore, until the lapsed expiration date was just smudges under someone else’s name. Eli stood by a trapdoor with a handmade sign declaring _River_ with an arrow pointing down to it, watching him with his arms folded.

“You’re the most stubborn asshole I’ve ever met,” Eli told him, but he’d told him that a few times that morning. Over instant coffee, watery oatmeal and what Rook suspected was not actually beef jerky. While Rook was exploiting the lukewarm water the bunker still had hooked up, Eli telling him off through the stall door as Rook tried to protect the sutured gash across his nose, pulling tight when he tried to pull a face at him and stinging hot under the spray. When Rook had retrieved his clothes from the dryer and Wheaty had cautiously told him he’d heard a lot about him, he was doing a good job, he’d see him soon (please. _please_ ) and to keep an ear out for him on the airwaves. Eli, with his tired eyes in his wild face who wanted so hard to be ready, wanted people to be safe and couldn’t turn it off just because Rook was endangered and danger all at once.

“I know,” Rook said, instead of how the rooms bled red if he stood too still, if he sat just wrong, how faces kept blurring together from what might have been fatigue but was definitely an accident waiting to happen, a misfired synapse away from Rook lunging at an ally, at weak Wheaty because part of his brain said _kill_ (said _cull_ ). How he could feel hands on his arms so clearly that he looked down and they looked wrong without handprints, and that he needed to sleep away from soft bodies and soft eyes, all pressure points and arteries.

How it was too soon, too soon – how he had to take himself out of the walls to get them out of him, where they’d been built in him, and his hands twitched towards his pocket again.

Eli nodded and yanked the trapdoor open, the dim roar of a river rushing up through the stairs leading down from it with the smell of damp, the smell of rust. Already sick of small spaces, Boomer bounded ahead, skittering away into the dark with the _click-click_ of claws on metal steps. “It’ll take you out by the foothills,” he told him. “The river’s underground until it feeds into the lake there. You’ll have to scrunch down a little to get through the cave opening, but it’s a clear run straight through.” He eyed him, then grinned large and startling. “Maybe more than a little.”

Rook smiled back at him, reached out to take Eli’s clasped hand and hold it firmly for a minute. “I’ll see you soon, officer,” Eli told him, and Rook switched his flashlight on before he climbed down into the dark.

 

 

He didn’t need to scrunch down for just the opening.

The walls of the narrow tunnel were covered in moss and slimy with moisture, the overpowering damp and mustiness at least something different, something distinct from the heavily recycled air of Eli’s bunker, and the wave of humidity hit Rook like a slap in the face when he finally got to the bottom, stooping to fit. The uneven floor made it slow going, torchlight shifting along glistening walls and it was the throat of the earth to Rook’s half-waking mind so he kept walking to find the teeth, since everything he met nowadays seemed to have them.

It seemed to go on forever.

It couldn’t have been that long, even hunched over and creeping like he was but Rook hurt (Hurt, capitalised, Hurt the proper noun). He hadn’t really been fighting, he knew that because he knew he had been _dreaming_ but some dreams mattered more than others and his hands hurt around the torch, ached more the longer he held it, so he traded hands often and reached out to touch the walls, to know they were real as Peaches butting into him from behind. Eventually it came to jagged rocks and an even tinier opening with water rushing down hard in front of it with the light shining outside, overcast and grey but bright and real and enough.

Enough space in the world for him to breath again, the way a bunker with recycled air couldn’t have because some things didn’t come down to square footage, so Rook ducked out through the narrow waterfall, let it soak him down before he climbed up through the mud and the reeds onto dry land again.

 

 

Rook took stock of his things when he’d hoisted Boomer out from where he was paddling at the edge of the slick riverbank, too unstable for him to climb himself while Peaches inelegantly clawed her way through. He’d lost his bow and poison arrows but Eli had found his sniper rifle, his pistol, the assortment of random keys he’d picked up and sort of casually been hoarding with the Just In Case mentally of people who grew up counting pennies. No grenades, which made him frown, but realistically he had been pulled out of hell and still kept his pocket change, so honestly he’d have still given Eli a five-star Yelp review if he thought Eli trusted the internet.

He’d come out of the tunnel to one of the smaller lakes, the many glorified ponds that littered the foothills stretching from Moccasin River up into the mountains, recognisable just for how they looked like puddles left by giants from the altitude he was at. It wasn’t warm under the cloudy sky and the wind was cutting straight through his wet clothes (thanks for the warning, Eli) and there was a split-second when Rook’s hands spasmed, when he tore through his pockets just to make sure.

He managed to pull the pills out and the waterproofing had done its job, the medicine safe inside, but with cold fingers it took an age to get the layers open, to tip two out onto his hand. They were a different shape to the ones he bought – there’d been a logo on the bottle, something slick and professional and unfamiliar because he’d always gone pharmacy brand for the discount, knew it didn’t matter either way. His pills had been wide and oval and made his mouth a little numb if it took him too long to swallow them, if he got distracted and left them tucked in against his cheek while he finished getting ready for bed, and he’d sat in his bathroom in his mother’s house the first weeks he’d taken them (teenaged and terrified) and he’d tried not to cry because the bitter-sting left in his mouth was what he thought poison must taste like.

Rook had been poisoned since then. A few times, and it didn’t taste like anything, so he took the pills with a cupped hand of water from the pond-called-lake and felt better for it, brand-name better all the way down.

 

 

-

 

 

After a while just spent breathing it in, letting the solitude soak in, Rook decided on Fall’s End. Following the curve of the land would take him past (late, too-late) Rae Rae’s farm, hugging the trees until he got back into the territory where everyone knew him and talked, and talked, and talked to him too late at night with too much in their voices for enemies trying to teach him a _lesson_ , but at least where he knew himself too. So he checked his shitty but waterproof compass, the kind you might get in a better kind of Christmas cracker and he set off, squelching through the mud, sticking to the thicker forest.

There was a burst of static. Another. A third, like someone was opening and closing their hand and suddenly Rook had a phantom word caught in his throat, a mirror neuron flashing empathy for someone who might not even have been there, might have been a faulty radio finally dying but wasn’t.

“ _This is Jacob Seed, addressing the people of Hope County_ ,” Jacob said from the small speaker, and he didn’t sound smug, or even angry. He sounded matter-of-fact, pared back to toneless in that rough voice and it should have been reassuring but it wasn’t, it was the lurching wrongness of looking down at a wound and seeing the smeared-red white of exposed bone when you’d just expected blood, seeing something not meant to be seen. Hearing Jacob Seed speak to them all and wholly unamused while Rook crouched on the ridge, waiting. “ _There were twenty-six men in the Elk Lodge at sunrise yesterday. Twenty-three corpses carried out last night. So I extend this offer once, and once only_.”

There was a long wait between sentences, made longer because Rook was listening with care, with caution, hand on the off-switch and waiting for the opening chords of something tinny and toxic to play – the expectation of the violence that Jacob had left him with, that he’d been carrying already. The radio reactivating was loud enough by contrast it almost startled him, waiting so intently that it was somehow a surprise for it to come.

 _“I swear on the Father’s life that any man, woman or child who can tell me who came out of that Lodge will be given free and clear passage from Hope County and left alive outside Eden’s Gate territory. Unharmed._ ”

No he didn’t, he couldn’t have, because Jacob Seed lied and he manipulated and he didn’t make promises that weren’t punctuated with bullets ( _again_ ) and Rook was back on his feet before he realised he’d stood, listening harder than he had in years, since he’d last sat in his mother’s bathroom and thought he knew what poison tasted like.

“ _This offer stands for the next twenty-four hours_. _If I don’t have my answer by then, I will stop asking, and I will start hunting,_ ” Jacob continued in that steady, bared-bone-wrong voice. Another crackle, like Jacob had let go of the button just for a moment, and something of that flash, that forest-fire burning when he spoke again, with finality. _“Choose wisely.”_

Rook stared out over into the valley and didn’t see it, eyes looking over it but sight turned in towards how his skeleton remembered-choosing-remembered- _choices_ where it blurred together in his mind but his body knew the shape of his spine against a hard chair and hands aching from pulling the trigger over (and over and over and over).

He shouldn’t have left the bunker. He should have seen this coming. Should have trusted Jacob to be _Jacob_ and to be unsatisfied with bodies left unnamed and it was so much fucking _easier_ to betray someone when you couldn’t look them in the eye so he shouldn’t have left, should have made them stare him in his face and tell him they’d take their freedom over his whole goddamn _life_ ending by _inches_ in those fucking red rooms – Boomer whined and Rook realised he was shaking, holding onto his rifle that his knuckles had gone white and his fingertips numbed (only you _only_ you only _you_ ).

Rook swallowed. Rolled his shoulders, settling into himself to think, to force his thoughts through a hairpin turn and slow.

Who knew? Eli, who’d have burnt with the Lodge rather than tell the Seeds who was inside it. Tammy, with her wolverine smile and the way she followed Eli in and out of rooms, clinging to the edge with her schoolteacher fingers with the blood under her nails. The three men who’d taken the Lodge, the kid Wheaty. And there was no telling who they might have mentioned it to in turn, high on the rush of finally getting something back from a grip like Jacob’s, laying siege to Eden’s Gate and finally hearing it creak – it could have been three voices, three levels advanced already, small-town ears working in small-town ways when all they had left was fragments of community and their habits to fall on. Three degrees of separation from Rook, for Jacob to hunt through, marked out in corpses and white sunbursts on a bloody backdrop, _the weak have their place_ and _meat_ written below it.

 

Another turn, another thought like _son, steady_ and nicotine fingers, a hand on his shoulder and white rooms a week earlier and a world apart, where he’d been certain and curious and would have known how to feel.

 

The Whitetails had saved him, Rook thought, Rook made himself remember. They’d saved him because he’d needed saving, because not being _them_ meant being one of _us_ to doomsday preppers, so used to facing down the end of days with no sides to pick from, no blood in the water. The Whitetails had saved him and Eli knew what Rook had done, had heard already the kind of chaos he was capable of and wanted as bad as only militant men could at the end of days.

Rook took a breath.

He could trust the Whitetails, he decided, even if he couldn’t, because being able to trust them said more about Rook than it did about them and Tammy wasn’t the only one with blood under her nails.

And he was glad to have decided that, to have been the man who could decide that when someone else decided to reach out and trust. A voice he hadn’t heard in days, maybe longer – he didn’t know and the days didn’t matter, really, just the rhythm of getting up (to be pushed down to get up to be pushed _down_ ). “To any who heard that,” Dutch said carefully, “I’d lay low for the next twenty-four, hell – make it forty-eight. Wait it out. Anyone out there who might be listening, who might be thinking of doing something _stupid_.”

 

And just in case Rook didn’t get it, since he wasn’t just anyone to a lot of someones nowadays, Dutch said slow and clear, “especially something stupid with _dynamite_ ,” and Rook could finally breathe again.

 

 

 

 

In the end Rook decided not to risk being seen while he still had a price on his head (was priceless) so he set up a hide overlooking the road, just a camouflage tarp and a couple of sticks, foil exposure blanket underneath and his back to a cliff he didn’t think even Jacob Seed could climb, and he waited it out over the whole day and into the evening, took his pills at eight p.m. like he used to and felt a little more normal, even eating homemade granola that tasted like gravel and water gone metallic from a purifier. He left Boomer to take watch and even kicked him out when he tried to slink inside the hide just after midnight, because the night belonged to him and him only for a few hours, closing his eyes and falling into the dark unafraid. It wasn’t the fall that killed you, he’d read somewhere, which had seemed so obvious to someone his kind of Bitten.

He went undisturbed for most of it, the majority of his defensive solitude. The Whitetails were holding to radio silence, closed ranks to their hidden bunkers and their cache sites in the dark and quiet, waiting for the mountain above them to slide into the sea, to fall with them beneath it, so only one person spoke. Only one person took hold of their transmitter to break the silence, and Jacob didn’t waste words this time.

 _“Time’s up_ ,”

and Rook sat under his tarp and listened to the crickets, slept without dreaming.

 

 

-

 

 

They’d made good time out of the mountains despite it all, Rook regaining his strength more and more as he walked in the clean air and pine needles of the best parts left of Hope County, not a scorched sinner in sight, not a single man nailed to trees with hands open and waiting. The swelling of his black eye went down, the raw of his throat receding until he could chirp back to Peaches just to watch her startle, stare at him suspiciously like he was up to something. He’d found the energy to jump over a log rather than crawl under it when they had to stop, for something other than Boomer’s insatiable need to inform him of the movements of local prey animals – Peaches had come to an abrupt halt in front and Rook almost ran into her when she backtracked at the break in the treeline, crouching because Peaches knew traps when she saw them but Rook kind of wanted to set one off anyway, just to watch it burn.

It took him a moment to understand the problem.

There weren’t peggies waiting, but a wide, grassy field, idyllic with wind making grass shimmer like sea water, the white sprays of flowering weeds that didn’t care they weren’t cared for. The field was wide and beehives had been crushed in it, overturned and still thriving with life yellow-black-buzzing, half-hidden in the grass. It wasn’t an ideal crossing to get back to Holland Valley, which was saying a lot coming from someone who used explosions as stress relief and who’d once kicked a man off a cliff purely in short-temperedness. But the alternative was cutting around it and risking the road or river, where peggies abandoned their cellphones and kept clear sightlines for traffic because they were Jacob’s peggies (the worst fucking peggies), or waiting until nightfall in Jacob’s actual territory, probably for another arrow in the leg and a golden oldies soundtrack to croon at him while he slaughtered men without faces.

Rook looked at Peaches, who looked back at him and made the whuffling noise through her nose that she had that one time (it was _one time_ ) he’d tried to give her cat food. “No,” he told her firmly, Rook the animal trainer and the strict disciplinarian. “You are an apex predator. We are apex predators, and we’re going to get through this with dignity.” Boomer got the message, got on board but then again, he’d never eaten a bee and also he knew peanut-butter cups were a Sometimes treat and Sometimes got a lot more often when Rook didn’t have to say “no” like that.

Peaches whuffled again and flicked her ears back and forth, and Rook looked out over the field between him and John Seed’s territory, the field with the bees blurring through the air and he didn’t feel sorry for Peaches at all, he didn’t.

 

 

 

 _No_ , he didn’t.

 

 

                                                                                                                                             

Walking across the meadow while carrying a hundred-forty pound cougar curled up to his chest, the excess of her sprawling over his shoulder, hadn’t been high on Rook’s list of goals in Hope County. The fact that it was because she was scared of bees and it made her feel better made him feel a little like Jacob Seed might have had it right: he was weak as hell. He’d lifted heavier, even heavier bodies in the recent weeks so it wasn’t so much the weight as his capitulation that bothered him while he carefully manoeuvred his way through the fallen beehives, backtracking and retracing when the buzzing got too high and alarmed, when he crossed the invisible boundary between Close and Too Close that he seemed to spend so much time treading on in Hope County.

Peaches was trap-tense in his arms, sending out that high chirp she did whenever Boomer frolicked his way out of sight, unbothered, making him scramble back to her and Rook swore to god, if he had to spend the night pulling grass seeds out of Boomer’s feet he was going to – well, he was going to do it, wasn’t he, always did, and the thought almost made him feel like smiling, laughing at himself in the green grass and the bright sun and not a trace of red anywhere.

 

“ _I know you’re out there,”_

 

someone hissed when he got halfway across the meadow, twitching each time a bee investigated his ears and the sore slice missing from his face, and Rook almost turned around to see who it was before he realised the buzzing of the bees had turned to crackling again, the short-wave static he had started keeping in his head that made voices feel naked to hear without it. A voice he hadn’t heard in a while, edge-eager and almost welcome just because it was familiar, just because it was something he knew and didn’t have to hold his breath for.

“ _God wouldn’t take you from us just when he gave you_ to _us_ , _I_ know _you’re out there,”_ and the cut-off edge of a word, a curse, his anger getting the better of him because that was John, _Sloth_ and _Greed_ and _Wrath_ and all seven just for him.

But then he actually played it back and oh god, found who, Rook almost asked aloud, and he knew he was wearing the kind of too-horrified expression that made Dutch laugh at him by how the cut across his face stung, felt close to cracking. He shook his head and craned his neck to look around Peaches’ body, back at the ground so he knew where to place his feet.

“ _I know what Jacob did_ ,” the almost-welcome voice of John Seed said, slowly, like the anger was too thick for him to get out as fast as he liked, and Rook stopped in his tracks and then,

“ _I’m_ sorry,” John said in that half-choked voice, said to the world because John Seed never cared who could hear him on an open frequency, and it was starting to sound like they weren’t the ones he was angry at after all, like Jacob had done something really, truly wrong and there was a lump in Rook’s throat that tasted a lot like fear, real fear because John took apologies from others measured by the _pound_ , ripped remorse from their skin and nailed it to his goddamn walls but he’d sounded like he meant it and somehow that was so much worse.

What had Jacob done, he almost took up his radio to ask – what had Jacob done that _John_ would ever feel sorry for it when he did so much himself without blinking, what had Jacob done for John to be enraged by and to atone for, another bible story just because of the names.

Where had Jacob’s hunting taken him when his twenty-four hours had ended, he wondered. Wondered bitterly what he’d have to be sorry for next time.

“Well, shit,” Dutch said and shit, Rook thought with something almost like a grin, that made his face feel stretched and crooked – he was better than Siri. Probably had a better response to people asking him to marry them, too, and he sort of had an idea what gift he would give himself if this stretched over his birthday. “You hear that, Deputy?”

Rook snorted and resettled Peaches in his arms, since Dutch was of the permanent opinion that he didn’t have working ears, couldn’t be trusted to listen with them and hadn’t seen, heard in the weeks they’d been speaking what Eli had taken one look to square away in his thoughts (right down to the quick).

A long burst of static, like Dutch was collecting his thoughts while Rook prepared to set Peaches down despite her warning growl, because the field was almost over and he would not be the weird mountain man who carried a cougar around like a baby, that was a bridge too far, and then it broke in a tone like revelation, hate-soft, some great weight once hanging coming crashing down because all that anger had to go somewhere, had to do something and there was so much of Rook to do something with that it was with something like relief that it came out as,

 

 

“ ** _Deputy_**.”

 

 

And he’d been so careful, he’d been so _sure_ to avoid his enemies he’d forgotten what everyone in the fucking Whitetails knew, how much a problem a friend could be. Rook was already scrambling to try and rip the radio free of his belt but Peaches was panicking at the sudden change from being safe in his arms, still too close to the bees and the claws of her back feet sunk into his thigh, his hip, the pain sending him into a desperate frenzy to try and pull himself free in time around her but the radio dropped out of his fingers just as he went to the ground, awkwardly curled to catch himself on hands and knees without crushing her, and she dragged herself free with a yowl and scrabbled away through the dirt with her tail puffed up and terrified.

 

 _“You_ ,” John Seed snarled, and Rook stared at the radio inches shy of his hand like he could take it back, like he could take any of it back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It works so well thematically, works in the words I want, but I think that everyone knows by now that I wrote Rook as a giant specifically so he could carry that goddamn cougar like a baby.
> 
> Chapter title from wishbone by Richard Siken.


	8. in you, everything sank

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Graphic description of the death of a minor, injuries.

The Sheriff’s Department had been volunteered to help find some missing hikers, once, about a month after Rook joined. A woman and her daughter and they’d only been missing for a day off the beginner trail, had given the route map to the ranger so odds were good. They’d been optimistic about finding them and had joked with each other, with the ranger who’d almost bitten through his tongue when Joey had gotten out of the squad car. And they’d been right in the end because they had – they’d found them, after only a few hours. Record time.

It had been spring, after a long winter.

They’d found them in pieces. The mother mostly eaten, abdomen hollowed out of all the vital things and half an arm dragged off into the shrubs, gnawed on. They’d found the daughter squeezed into a narrow cavern a thick but short blood trail away while the junior ranger had vomited off the path, because it had been a long fucking winter before the spring that Rook joined the Sheriff’s Department so a half-starved mountain lion – usually so careful, afraid of humans – had heard a young voice chattering and gone for broke and the teenager, the girl had gotten slashed so deep it had almost cut her in half and crawled off to hide while it tore her mother down for trying to get in the way. Save your own goddamn life, the cougar had heard, the girl had heard and eventually all of them did, the cougar and the girl and Jessie Bowman too, dry-eyed at her husband’s funeral.

But not Rook, who heard everything else.

Rook, who had been travelling for so long with Peaches that on some level they’d both forgotten she was one, a mountain lion nowhere near half-starved. In the prime of her life and larger than normal, an apex fucking predator so the new landmarks she’d clawed into him were deep and stretched down his hip, down the side of his thigh, had bled hard and fast because that’s what a shot in the leg _did_ , it _bled_ until he was sunk down in mud made of dirt and his own blood, wrapping bandages rapidly around his leg and packing it tight, numb-tight as fast as he could because he wasn’t going to have long before his hands got too weak to maintain pressure. While Peaches slunk back made of guilt and confusion because who’d done it, who’d _hurt_ him and he couldn’t even blame her because it had been his own stupid fault for panicking when he knew better, knew it just made everything worse.

Rook grabbed the closest tree when he’d done as much as he could and tried to get to standing through the pain radiating up through his stomach, curdling into nausea and he wasn’t going to vomit because he had to get _moving_ , he had to keep going until he found someone or found a landmark to be found by because the bandages around his leg were already starting to feel hot. He made it but staggered and just abandoned his pack, left just with his radio and gun and the canteen in his pocket right down next to his pills. Peaches nudged him forward when he hesitated, when the idea of stepping on that already shaking-draining leg was unbearable and he could have shot her, could have kissed her for it because it forced his foot down and oh,

that was pain, wasn’t it

so he took another step just to be on the better leg, the next bad one fast to get it over with and with that he was moving, dragging himself through the trees half-shoved half-baked half-dead and all pain over tree roots put there purely to spite them.

 

 

Rook crashed through the broken-open door of the first sign of civilisation he saw, a rusted feed shed, Eden’s Gate branded into the side in red and _Sinners_ broken up by bullet holes, among bales of hay and the smell of mildew. There was blood seeping heart-slow down into his boots and it took him two tries to get onto his back once he’d fallen because he’d always been big but he’d never felt so much of him before, not until he had to turn and try to lift the radio as well, two impossible things in a day.

“This is Deputy Rook,” he said after it had taken him two tries to depress the button with both hands, fingers tingling and not doing what he needed them to do. “Requesting immediate-“ he broke into a pained groan high in his throat, half a whine, both hands wrapped as tight as he could around the radio through the spasm because he couldn’t let go and know he’d pick it up again, had to tell someone, had to be heard for once, for _once_ , “I’m hurt,” he forced out through lips going numb. “I need help. I need, I need,” he said and the phrase struck him through darkening vision as ridiculous, to say then of all times because he’d always needed and it just wasn’t the point anymore. “By the old apiary,” he gasped, “there’s a shed, please,” and he didn’t know when the radio had fallen from his hand, tried to lift it and bumped it into his leg instead, sliding slick over bandages gone red when he tried to look.

Something wet brushed into his head and he thought, impossibly, of more blood until the high keening reached his ears and fuck, oh fuck, Boomer’s nose, his stupid-beautiful face looking down at him and his poor boy frantic and _how could he do this_ , how could he leave Boomer all alone again to sit by a corpse but he couldn’t help his eyes trying to close,

he

couldn’t help              

so many things

but most of all, he thought or he didn’t, the thought just happened to him like everything happened to Rook,

he couldn’t help this.

 

 

 

 

Dying wasn’t anything like dreaming.

 

But at least it didn’t hurt.

 

 

 

 

There were hands in his hair, sapping the cold out with each pass of their fingers. The kind of gentle touch Rook had gotten used to going without when he’d gotten too tall for his mother to reach and gone to Hope County, where no one wanted to be gentle to him.

“Tell me where you are,” someone said in a voice made of whispers and static, which was a ridiculous thing to say – he was there, with them, and he told them so with his head resting in their lap where they were both on the grass, the sweet scent of it filling the air.

“No,” they said, “you’re not.” They touched the sides of his face, hands blurred white-green around the edges and cold for a second, a hard flash of sensation before the world turned soft again. “You’re unconscious,” they told him, features blurring into each other where they were looking down at him, “because you’re dying, but I am just dreaming and I need you to tell me where you are,” and Rook remembered a shed, _Sinners_ painted on the door past broken beehives and a swamp of his blood sinking into the dirt behind him, a girl in a crevice with her hands gone blue-black, fingers scattered on the topsoil and wild things half-starved – remembered crawling and falling and failing while a dog howled and keened and tried to shake someone alive but his tongue felt thick in his mouth, taking up so much space it felt impossible for him to have spoken before.

The hands on the side of his face pressed harder and tilted it back up until he was looking at them again and he hadn’t even noticed he was sliding downwards until they dug their fingers in and that sweet smell was back like flowers, like sugar, like ozone and

 _“_ Tell me where you _are_ ,” Joseph Seed demanded with his fever-bright eyes searching for a face in a dream, where faces didn’t go, “tell me _what your name is_ ,” and Rook could see right into his eyes because

dying wasn’t like dreaming

and someone louder called, “I’ve got a pulse!” and dragged him right through the ground, Joseph’s scream of loss and fury echoing in his ears.

 

 

 

“Hold him down!” someone barked just as Rook gasped and jerked, something impossibly cold shocking through his body, a pulse rocketing up his spine that had to be torture, had to be punishment and then again, and again, and his heart throbbing in time to agony, his heart that was the agony in trying to send blood somewhere torn open and not ready for it.

“‘By the apiary’ when there’s three of them – and this is what you get,” John Seed was ranting, impossibly, a human voice not separated by layers of distance and short-wave translation and _human_ like he just wasn’t over radio. “For your _defiance_ , this is how God shows you, how he _punishes_ ,” his ink-marked fingers catching a sunbeam when he gestured with those tattooed hands as he paced quick-hard in the barn too small for him, for the sheer force that was John Seed, making him surreal in the drifting dust-motes there. Snapping those fingers at someone who dove in with something that flashed silver and cold into Rook’s hand, another person holding up a clear bag in one hand, red in another.

Yet another someone with hands of blue latex swam in front of Rook’s blurred, inconstant vision looking worried, kept looking up at his face like he was going to cry “gotcha!” and murder them. “He’s awake,” the woman said, worried and flinching when he tried to focus on her.

Rook’s fingers twitched because with Joseph’s face in his head and John in arm’s reach, either way a gun would solve his problem so why weren’t his hands moving? And then John was leaning over him with a blur of movement, braced on one arm with the black graffiti of his sins scrawled over and spilling down his hands to where the left was planted flat next to Rook’s head. Those impossibly bright eyes looking right into his face, so intense that Rook could blame it on the blood loss but honestly it shocked the breath out of him, made him kick his uninjured leg out in an aborted jump to flee, into something that cursed. “You don’t get to die,” John said in that precise way he had, every word clipped and a false-seething kind of patient, a scalpel to Jacob’s machete, “until I fucking _say so_.”

“Herald, please! Please, sir, he’s not stable, I need room to move if we’re going to save him.” Which we shouldn’t, that reluctant tone said while Rook stared into John’s eyes and wished he’d blink.

John looked for a moment longer then he was standing again in a swift move that left him glaring at her, the Blue Latex Peggie, who visibly quailed. “If he dies,” he said, reasonable and _it’s not being aggressive, Rook, it’s being firm_ , “you die.” He reached down a hand on Blue’s shoulder. “It’s the will of the Father that this man be saved, do you understand? That he be our Brother.”

Blue couldn’t nod any more unless she wanted her head to fall off. Which was maybe exactly what John wanted from her, because he nodded back and clapped that shoulder once. “Good.” He spared a glance for Rook, dying on the floor but not His Problem for the moment and turned. “Set the tent up outside and tell me as soon as he can be moved.” Words growing fainter as he walked out, a whirlwind of organisation and orders. “Secure the perimeter. Nothing gets in or out.”

But the joke was on him, and Rook’s chuckle startled Blue Latex into dropping something that shattered – Rook was on his way out anyway, and he closed his eyes and left that shed, left everything in it for the dark.

 

 

 

-

 

 

Someone touched his cheek. Brushed it, really, and Rook smelt antiseptic so he didn’t want to move, didn’t have to, because antiseptic meant sick meant _leave him alone, Staci, carry your own damn cabinets_.

A tap, then a blinding slap that snapped his head to the side, forced his eyes open and watering.

John settled back into a chair by the low stretcher Rook was on – he jerked, a random surge of reflexes and his wrist caught with a clang just inches from his side. Handcuffed, he saw, one on either side of the gurney, holding him flat. An IV stuck into the back of one hand. “You’re awake. Finally!” John added, like it was somehow a lovely surprise for Rook to be awake and he hadn’t just slapped him across the face.

“I’m not,” Rook mumbled back, tripping over the words with a tongue that tasted like ash but still wanting to make the point.

“You are,” John assured him and he was so certain that there wouldn’t be any point in arguing. He seemed enormously cheered by Rook’s recovery, which sort of made Rook wish he’d died.

But he hadn’t, so, “my dog? … cat?” he croaked. John raised his eyebrows and reached out for a jug of water on a little fold-out table next to him, poured a glass of water.

“Oh,” he said, “I wouldn’t worry about that right now. Let’s talk about you. You know, I was so… _worried_ that Faith would take you?” He held the glass out to Rook’s mouth, shook it a little as a hint and it might not have been his fault that he made everything just a little menacing and for lack of a better option, Rook reluctantly sipped from it, a little because he needed it and a lot so John didn’t break the glass against his face.

John seemed pleased. Rook had heard that before but never seen it and it was infuriating, how _pleasing_ John pleased was, how it made his smile infectious and his eyes seem brighter when this was a man who flayed people, who didn’t have any right to have a smile like that. “But she didn’t,” he continued, settling back in his chair and stretching his legs out in front of him, putting the water back down. “Because God brought you to me, deputy,” _DEHP(y’)tii,_ that way John couldn’t leave a word unclaimed, “so I could show you The Path. So that all this _sacrifice_ would have a purpose, would have _meaning_.”

Rook squinted, because something about that had felt wrong, rung wrong when John was usually so pitch-perfect. He noticed hands were digging into his well-tailored pants over the knees, his sins spelt out down the backs of his hands and white knuckles. Something in his throat hinging on “sacrifice” and that thought was at the back of his mind, wasn’t it, and it wasn’t like he could ignore John anymore.

“What did Jacob do?” Rook asked, rasped, glass of water not enough, nothing like what he needed.

John didn’t tense like he expected him to at the question. Just blinked slow and serpentine, reclining lazily in his chair and somehow so much more dangerous than he had been a second ago, the air in the room starting to rise to a boil.

A distant flap was flung open – in a tent, of all things, Rook was gambling his life against John’s patience in a _tent_ and, “Herald John!” a man cried, too well-groomed to be a normal peggie, white coat around his shoulders. “Herald, you have to come now!”

John lifted his head, just looked at the non-peggie, whose words seemed to die right in his throat. “‘Have to’?” he repeated.

“That’s not,” the man stammered, then “I didn’t,” and he took a step back. Tried again. “It’s the Father,” he said in a rush, hurrying through the reverence of the word but not willing to skip it entirely (capitalised, the proper _noun_ ). “He’s called, he says he needs to speak to you, it’s urgent, and–,”

“He’s with Jacob,” John said, hand tracing up the IV tube leading into Rook’s hand while he stood, while Rook watched it all, fascinated. “ _Jacob_ ,” he said again in a curious kind of way, flicking the bag and then leaving it alone. “I’m sure between _the two of them_ ,” lunging and kicking an empty chair towards the entrance as his volume escalated to a roar, “they can _wait!_ ”

The man had fled before the chair clattered to a halt. John stood breathing hard for a moment and Rook knew his eyes had gone wide. He could feel the skin stretching from his expression, the cut still healing over his nose.

The Father. Joseph.

 _Tell me what your name is_ and three of them, _three_ , but Rook had Joseph on the brain so that made sense. Joseph who was nowhere and everywhere, stood over all of Hope County because they’d starting carrying him in their minds, right at the back of their thoughts. Who no one had seen in person since he’d sung Amazing Grace in a burning helicopter, shoulder bare under Rook’s hand but the ghost of him still watching them, a hundred feet tall with his hand stretched out and there if you’d just kneel, asked him to love you.

It made sense to dream of Joseph at the end, Rook knew (told himself once and then again, again) and _fuck_ , he had to breathe. He had to get his face under control and he’d tried to school it back to something like neutral before John turned back to Rook with that genial smile, that whip-crack change that made him so hard to plan for, plan against. “Where were we?” All polite, _sorry I just had to take that call_ and sitting back down for the meeting. Rook eyed him, the bomb that was John Seed gone ticking.

“… You’re tired, still.” John allowed when Rook didn’t know what to say and he just couldn’t get his head around it, how easily John seemed to be taking this. How satisfied it made him just seeing Rook handcuffed and hooked up to an IV, getting strong enough for John to really go to town with all the threats Rook had missed out on, carve him up to his heart’s content. “They said you can tolerate the helicopter soon and then, well.” Leaning forward to pat Rook’s hand, skin shockingly warm. “We’ll get to know each other properly.”

He straightened, some hidden signal bringing a short, freckled woman in with a small ampule. “But you understand why I don’t want you thinking too hard about it until then,” said so reasonably that Rook just watched, numb, as she reached up and injected something into his fluids bag that at least wasn’t green but still made his head swim.

That shocking warmth on his forehead, a proprietary palm smoothing the hair back. “I’ll see you soon,” and then Rook didn’t dream, not of Joseph or anyone else.

 

 

-

 

 

They were already transferring him to a travel stretcher when Rook woke up, groggy but feeling more himself, less like John Seed was still rummaging through his insides. They took him on a stretcher to the helicopter (four of them, while John just gave him a Look like he’d grown that much to spite him, so familiar it was almost violating) on a long walk away from the tent taking up most of the field, ringed by trees and nowhere near enough space to land. They went downhill for a while, Rook staring at the sky in defeat but noticing how he could feel his hands again, felt like he might have his body back, big and solid and feeling like shit (but his). There was a huge flat spot by the river at its fastest point, a parking lot where the kids used to go and neck.

The rushing water become the soundtrack to them sitting him up, cuffing his hands together at the wrist and then securing it to a thin, tilted bar under the seat across from him with another long, rattling chain. A peggie took his seat there, legs awkwardly set to the side of where Rook had tugged the chain as close to the open door as he could, automatically trying to make it easier, to be polite (for his fucking captor, thanks _mom_ ) and wincing at how sitting pulled at what must have been hundreds of stitches under his simple clothes, too soft to be a peggie’s (too big to not be his). John almost threw himself into the other chair opposite him, just off to the right and full of energy (surprise surprise, victory really doing something for John “I’ll see you in court” Seed), and then he pulled on a headset, shot the pilot a thumbs-up through the gap to the cockpit.

Rook wished John would enjoy himself less. It would have been polite. He just let his head fall back against the seat and closed his eyes, didn’t bother stirring when someone’s too-familiar hands clamped the cups of the headset over his ears.

 

 

 

The helicopter had already warmed up by the time they settled in, did all the usual checks and it took off so quickly Rook just had to press himself back into the seat to feel steady. It started climbing before it stopped to hover, something shrill in the cockpit going off.

Why, Rook wondered. Why was this happening? Maybe it was god, or upper-case God. Maybe every fucking hitch and stone in his path really was because he’d listened so long he’d forgotten how to hear, and someone up high was pissed about it.

 

 

 

“What’s the hold-up?” John asked, loud in his headphones. Rook opened his eyes. The peggie across from him was holding something and talking quickly with his hand over his microphone, leaning towards John. Holding a slim rectangle, and it was embarrassing how long it took Rook to recognise a smartphone. John shook his head, lip lifting in a snarl, but the peggie pushed it towards him with a shocking lack of reluctance.

John shoved it back. Shocking no one.

The peggie looked at the photo on the screen – a splash of red was all Rook could make out, and John looked back at him almost challenging. Daring him to _make_ him take the call. But the peggie just waited, helpless, and in the end John snatched it and slid his thumb across to answer as something heavy started sinking in Rook’s stomach. The peggie quickly yanked a thin black cord out of the pouch between them, doing something complicated and then it was in his headphones, or maybe in his head.

“John,” Jacob’s voice came loudly, too forcefully over not a radio but a goddamn _iPhone_ there, infuriating for someone who’d used a thrift-shop short-wave for weeks and not the _point_ , Rook, “the deputy, you have him,” and John’s face did something complicated at the sound of his voice.

He just said, “yes, I do,” the second-simplest thing Rook had ever heard him say and the second-most frightening, so for all that his whole body hurt, for all that what he could feel – through the jabs and the needles they’d shoved into his leg, he wished Peaches had just torn it off – he started looking around. Started tugging at his handcuffs while the helicopter hovered, sending ripples out over the rain-thick river thriving probably, what – a few dozen feet below, survivable if he didn’t land headfirst and frankly, maybe better if he did. He felt the beginnings of adrenaline, the ghost of those red rooms swimming through him. He had enough time to stoke it, to flex his hands before,

 

“It’s him,” Jacob said. “The fire didn’t kill him, Joseph saw it and your doctor just sent the pictures. It’s the same wounds, it’s the _deputy_ ,” and Rook felt himself go very, very still.

 

John drummed his fingers on the side of the phone. “The deputy is _what_ ,” he asked, tone even but getting impatient already, not deferring like Rook had on some level always thought he would. Jacob’s voice was already rising and not smug, not amused, not blank but actually frustrated– 

 

“ _Him_ , he belongs to us, he’s _ours_ ,”

and at this distance Rook could see John’s pupils dilate, shoot up to look across the helicopter at Rook and his suddenly bloodless face.

 

He couldn’t hear John’s breathing over the helicopter blades. But he could see his chest stutter as it caught, then start to rise again. “You’re sure,” John said even though he didn’t look disbelieving at all because Joseph _had_ seen, because he was right. The thought like those poison arrows, like blood loss and shock and finally someone else saying it out loud that Rook had soulmates he could hear after years of silence.

And Rook heard, “Yes,” he heard, “I’m sure.” His eyes burning.

His eyes were burning and not just because he refused to look away, to blink first, because he was sitting chained across from his soulmate by his wrists and that voice made it real. The stitches down his thigh made it real, the gash across his face, the scar he’d gotten ten years ago behind the video store and Rook, chained up like a dog, like one of Jacob’s wolves. Dragged because when Rook had been listening they hadn’t wanted to speak but really had been there, real and human and alive, hadn’t listened when he had because they had each other, stopped _looking_ so hard that they couldn’t be found, that they had taken themselves _away_ from him only to come back, to come back in the worst possible way, and that was it, wasn’t it, Rook’s breaths starting to heave while John stared at him, both of them frozen.

That was it, they didn’t want him

                                  not-wanted, not-looked-for, not- _for_ -you

and they never had. They’d been made whole and left him in the dark and while they learned how to stand together, and only when he wanted to stand against them did they come crashing through like they’d ever wanted him before.

John’s lips parted, and he looked at Rook like revelation come to a prophet, like a symphony to a deaf man, the third impossible thing Rook had done (had been) that week.

Right there.

Like nothing had ever happened because really, nothing ever _had_.

“You don’t want me,” Rook said in a voice he didn’t recognise. “You just want me out of the _way_ ,” and he raised his better leg and kicked at the insult-thin metal bar they’d cuffed him to, hit it solid and hard and _big_ enough that it clanged-reverberated up his leg and gave, just a little. The peggie lifted his rifle higher against his chest in warning and John leaned forward with his hand out, voice ( _voices_ ) spilling from the phone and from the headset Rook ripped free of and Rook kicked the bar again, and again, shook the helicopter and what a beautiful look of shock John had when that bar gave way and the chain slid loose and Rook hurled himself out without hesitating,

 

since it wasn’t the falling that killed you,

 

and hit the water all at once.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cool cool. I'm going to go sleep for a week, and no I'm not joking, see you then and I hope you enjoy this latest installment of “only the Seeds would have a soulmate who’d throw themselves out a helicopter to escape: a saga”.
> 
> Chapter title from A Song of Despair by Pablo "ask me about my sonnets" Neruda.


	9. run better (run)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from and suggested song choice is Manhunt by Shelby Merry.

Rook had always been a strong swimmer. Five stars from the swimming teacher, went through the classes goldfish to flounder to dolphin to shark, record time.

But that had been with two healthy legs, so. Back to goldfish it was.

Rook hit the water curled-back first and sank like a bag of dimes into the rushing water, torn blind down the river with his cuffed hands tucked to his chest and the cold hitting like millions of needles all pressing into his skin at once – the force of the current dragging him flat, dragging his bound arms up above his head and his legs out long. He twisted, hands grasping at the river floor but just dragging up clouds of silt into the already blurry water, catching on pebbles and making it too murky to see.

He bobbed up eventually and gasped (half-air, half water) when he broke the surface, the rush of the world coming back in the sound of the current and aircraft flying low for a moment before he was dragged under again. But he’d seen something, a blur of high pines and he got himself together enough to start kicking, tied hands doing him no favours. Water the enemy the way it never had been as a shark – gone goldish and going from cold-hard-loud to dark-muffled pressing in to try and force the air right out of him even as he managed to breach the surface at irregular intervals. Letting the current take him back down every time a plane flew overhead and getting _tired_ , so tired. Each kick taking a little more but so determined to die from spite of John (of all of them) that his feet touched ground after an age and Rook hauled himself up onto shore, crawling when the water didn’t support him anymore, managing it by his elbows (the skin of his teeth) and then just lying there. Gasping. Mud seeping through the back of his shirt, the vicious hurt tearing down his leg and up his hip.

He could hear rustling. Those planes still criss-crossing overhead. His own strained, relieved breaths and now that he was mostly out of the water it was starting to feel cold in the shade.

He had a moment. A long moment, maybe minutes rather than the seconds it felt like, before he heard more rustling. Twigs breaking. And then footsteps, squelching in the wet earth, “I think I hear something,” from a man with an accent. A man probably coming after him, because that was his luck. Rook screwed his eyes shut and got onto his belly, hands slipping on the ground, before he pushed himself into an awkward crouch.

“I’d better – oh _shit_ ,” Rook being the kind of swamp monster you’d see in B-grade creature-features at the drive-in, rocking up out of the mud and hooking his cuffs around the peggie’s neck, body weight and momentum carrying them both back into the reeds. The sounds of splashing, struggling and then just a few bubbling noises.

Then nothing at all, just the water and the frogs.

Rook searched him, quick and efficient while he bobbed in the water. No handcuff key. It would have been too much to hope that this random peggie was into bondage and believed in planning ahead.

He did have a nine-mil, though. And a machine gun that Rook left behind with real regret, and it turned out that you couldn’t really shoot the handcuffs off your own wrists, especially with pain making everything just that little bit too blurry, putting a tremor through your nerves.

Jumping out the helicopter had been a good call, he told himself, starting to shiver. The right call.

“Hey Jimmy,” someone called, which was a name Rook didn’t need for the man dead in the shallows. “See anything?”

Rook sighed through his nose and checked – the gun was fully loaded. This was a great find for about ten seconds since in his plan to sneak up and shoot Peggie Two, he hadn’t factored in his leg just saying “fuck you” so hard his vision greyed out when he tried to stand.

The right call, he reminded himself.

So instead he stayed down, handgun held securely in both hands (police-academy proper) and waited. The approaching peggie made an embarrassing amount of noise coming towards him through the trees (fuck fuck _ouch_ fuck I hate these _fucking_ woods) which made it worse when he crashed into view exactly where Rook through he would be – and the shot went wide, too far to the side because his fucking leg wouldn’t keep him braced.

A neat hole blown in the tree beside him, the peggie stared at Rook. Neither of them really sure what to do when The Deputy failed to shoot the peggie he’d aimed at.

The peggie raised his gun sort of uncertainly, like he was asking a question, “you don’t want to do that,” Rook warning, weary, since John at the very least would want a shot at Rook for escaping and was famously ready to shoot a proxy.

The peggie went for it, jerked the gun up to centre-mass. Rook closed his eyes.

An ear-splitting yowl hit him the same time a spray of bullets went wide, a series of splashes that sent water across Rook’s body, flecked onto his face. He opened his eyes to see a sopping wet Peaches tear the screaming peggie’s throat out in a vicious arterial spray, scream cutting off in a wrenching noise before Peaches pulled her teeth free. Licked her lips and gave Rook an expectant look.

“… Good _girl_ ,” Rook sighed, starting the struggle towards her. “Who’s getting treats tonight, it’s _you_.”

 

 

He’d washed up on the small outcropping west of Dutch’s island, he realised when Peaches helped drag him up onto solid ground and he’d bullied his body into standing. Lightheaded, wobbly, but more sure of himself by the second – a surge of confidence he could probable chalk up to hitting his head on the river floor – while his leg went a worrying sort of numb. Rook made his way up over the rise, slowed by sticking to areas well-covered by the trees to hide from the planes still flying by in a surprisingly regimented set of search patterns.

Also by the breaks he had to take – every five minutes on the incline, every ten going downhill. But those were really his failings. In the end he got to the other side of the island, looked across the suddenly daunting stretch of water separating him from Dutch’s island ( _here there be dragons_ and morphine, ideally).

Rook leaned against a tree trunk, safely shaded by the foliage, and told himself again because someone had to:

He’d made the right call.

Said it out loud just to hear it, which was basically useless because Peaches was his audience and he assumed she would support him unconditionally because she was an excellent cougar, his good girl, wounds down his side or not. Casting a glance at the sky and hearing planes only distantly, Rook prepared for the worst swim of his fucking life.

 

 

… And he even had to leave the handgun, he realised just as he staggered into the water up to his knees. Because John had given him pants without any _pockets_ probably out of sheer fucking pettiness and Rook was going to throw John out of the helicopter next, he swore to _god_.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Rook had been tempted, on the previous bank, to wait until nightfall to cross. But it was getting dark by the time he gasped and somehow made his way to Dutch’s island, every movement a fight against the water, against gravity, against the little voice in the back of his head saying _lie down_ , _just lie **down**_ and when he got there and turned, he realised he’d been right. Could see lights moving through the trees in the twilight – peggies searching in formation, which meant Jacob had gotten involved and Rook didn’t have the blood to spare for another poisoned arrow.

He managed to get to Dutch’s bunker with some semblance of dignity. Which was to say, with none but no one to say so, because his night vision was as shit as his normal vision had been that day, the rest of him kept moving purely by bloody-mindedness and the strength he’d built for years hammering against a wall inside him, real only there and suddenly something to be grateful for, because he slammed his fist into Dutch’s bunker and collapsed as the doors came open, heard, “Rook!” and he’d made it. Blood where he’d bitten through his lip with the effort and the feeling of his flesh tearing open in strained points along his legs, fingers long past numb and he’d fucking made it, so John Seed and his whole fucking family could _suck_ it.

 

 

 

Dutch managed to drag him down the stairs and only dropped him on the last two, which was pretty amazing for a guy his age and relative size. Came back with bolt-cutters for the cuffs, sat him down in the shower and helped him cut the muddied, bloodied pants enough for him to get at the wound and yeah, he’d called that right, because they cut the bandages off too and he’d torn more than a few. But from a cast of thousands, (more than) a few stitches weren’t a huge loss, so Rook sat under the cold spray until the worst of the grime was gone, until his hair was plastered to his face, his neck and then he leaned on Dutch all the way to the living room and the older man sewed him up. Frighteningly quiet, focused harder on Rook’s leg than on anything he’d seen him do before.

Peaches watched from the doorway and Dutch didn’t say anything when he was done, when Rook had helped him bandage up the last of it again under a fresh layer of antiseptic, when he’d grabbed a couple of worn-soft blankets and pulled them over him on the couch. He crouched there by his side for a long time, though, hand pressed to his face up over his eyes, behind his glasses.

“I’m okay,” Rook mumbled, or maybe he didn’t. He’d never been so tired. He’d read once that so much of the body was water but his must have been sleet, must have been frozen. Glacial run-off at the start, flowing downhill.

Dutch sighed and stood, looked like he was going to say something and then closed his mouth again. Shook his head and hesitated, but Rook had fallen asleep before he could leave the room.

 

 

 

He wasn’t dying anymore. There was no excuse to place Joseph Seed in his thoughts.

 

 

He found his way anyway.

 

 

Rook opened his eyes and knew someone was there. Turned his head and the man turned in his direction, on the other side of the wall had no face, but Rook knew who was standing there with his hand pressed to the impregnable layer between them.

“I know you’re there,” Joseph Seed said, Georgia-rounded vowels, that soft and languid pace. “You survived.” Relief in how he pressed his hand that bit harder into the barrier between them, like he could push through ( _Born Whole: Mateless_ and _permanent_ , _permanent_ ) if he wanted to. The blurred world was green behind him and spotted with white – something peaceful, something that reminded him of sweeter smells and soft grass beneath his head. What the bliss was supposed to be and wasn’t.

Joseph Seed, standing in it.

The third soulmate, who listened but never heard Rook, who’d sat and waited and been wanted but never wanted him back. He stood at the wall in his snare-stillness and his hand pressed there, long fingers fanned out and the strapped of the rosary pressed between them and the wall Rook had railed against his whole life, indestructible and sure, suddenly transparent. Rook standing in the dark as invisible as he’d ever been while Joseph spoke, words clear when Rook had only ever heard whispers, exchanges muffled by distance and layers, layers of unwanted, unneeded, _unnecessary_ ,

“I know you’ve been alone. That we left you. Alone.”

Something twisting that word, like he had the nerve to fucking _empathise_ with Rook and that was the problem with Joseph Seed, Rook knew. He would tell you all the things you wanted to hear right down in the lizard-dark part of your brain, in that burning-empty rawness where all your hurt and your loneliness lived. He knew exactly what to say to wake it, feed it, to crack it open like a gaping maw inside you. Desperate. Until it belonged to him and what did you know, suddenly you did too. Hundreds of you, hundreds just like you, with their eight-pointed crosses and all willing to die.

Knew how to mean it, which made it all so much worse.

Rook had wanted to belong to Joseph Seed for years before he met him, and he didn’t say anything. Knew a man in a dream had no face and he could only see Joseph Seed because he’d been looking at him all his life when he’d not once looked back, knew the shape of him even without a face because he’d listened and not once looked away.

“We will not abandon you again. You won’t be _alone_ , again,” Joseph said, and he took a step back. “We built this wall.” That was the voice that Rook knew, creeping back. Firm and pitched to carry for a church hall instead of the space between two minds. Joseph let his hand fall from the wall, hang at his side. “We will raze it.”

Rook closed his eyes once and then again, again, and it took half a scream and a prayer for him to wake when it had never been hard before. He jolted upright on Dutch’s too-short couch and startled Peaches next to him, leaned down to soothe her by reflex and ending up just stroking his fingers through her fur compulsively, over and over.

It didn’t make him feel better. Rook didn’t know how to feel that way when the enemy was living inside him and suddenly cared about it.

 

 

-

 

 

He didn’t know how long he’d slept the half-gone sleep of the dead and the bunker didn’t have any windows to gauge the time of day – that would have defeated the point – but the next time he woke up he heard the whistle of a stovetop kettle coming to the boil, the living room was lit yellow from the hallway. The sound of movement in a nearby room reassuring in a way he couldn’t describe. He tried to stretch and realised a split-second too late how bad an idea it was, curling back in on himself with a groan and his whole _body_ hurt, when he’d only really hurt one half of it. A quarter, really. But then he remembered the water, and the age it took to swim. How the river itself seemed under the control of the Seeds too, trying every inch to drag him down and so realistically, sore was better than dead and he’d just have to put up with it.

There was a clatter from the other room. “I don’t love having a goddamn cougar hangin’ around and giving me the beady-eye, Rook!”

Yeah, Peaches would do that. “Just give it to her,” he called in a sleep-rough voice, since he knew exactly what beady eye Dutch was getting and what it meant. “Whatever you’re holding.”

“Why the hell would I give a crockpot to a cougar?”

“She just wants to look at it, she’ll leave you alone after.” Wait. “You have a crockpot?” Rook asked around a yawn.

“Yeah I got a goddamn crockpot, so what? A man can’t make himself some chilli without getting the third and fourth degree, in my own goddamn bunker and here you are critiquin’ my…” Dutch’s muttering got too faint to hear as he moved around in the other room and Rook watched the fish in the tank. Little blue ones with a bright stripe and tiny fins, too little for Peaches to care about and probably not as interesting as the crockpot anyway.  

“Peaches!” he called, since that look could be a little unsettling and Dutch was a naturally paranoid man, an armed man who had seen his injuries, how she’d clawed him straight to hell.

Straight to the Seeds, actually, and he snorted despite himself. Peaches padded in, head still low on her shoulders because he smelled like antiseptic and blood and, realistically, a little bit of infection and she knew something was wrong. It didn’t stop her from clambering onto the couch with him when he patted his stomach invitingly, so Dutch came back to Rook sitting propped up against the arm of the couch with Peaches wrapped around him and her face shoved in his neck, paws opening and flexing on his shirt but her claws safely retracted. The weight of her making it a little hard to breathe, centred mainly on his stomach except where he’d parted his knees for her back legs to stretch out, but all of her warm and soft and reassuring.

“You’re soft as French goddamn cheese,” Dutch informed him. “You can’t tell me that isn’t hurting your leg.”

Rook nodded since it really, really was but in an aching way, throbbing, not tearing or seeping. “Worse ways to go,” he said, flinching a little because her whiskers were sticking into his ear and that was honestly more of an issue.

“I come back and you’re getting groomed by that damn cougar, we’re having an intervention. Now take your pills, idiot.” Rook stretched out around Peaches and took the mug of water, pills palmed.

“She almost killed you,” Dutch said, like he needed the reminder. “That fully grown mountain lion that you’re spooning there.”

“My fault,” Rook said, and took the little white painkillers, the half-green capsule for the antibiotics, swallowed them with the filter-bland water. “She’s still my girl,” and she’d absolutely groomed him before, even pinned Boomer down and had a go at his hopeless ears while Boomer pretended not to enjoy it. “And also, how long’ve you been spooning wrong, Dutch?” He winked. This was easy when his eyes almost felt swollen shut from exhaustion. It was possible he was winking with both eyes. “You want to learn how it’s done, you just cuddle up whenever. Plenty of room.”

Dutch looked sorely tempted to drop the mug on his face, but Rook wasn’t just injured, he was Injured, so instead he just gave him a sour look and carried it out. Turned the lights off on the way out and left Rook and Peaches curled up on the couch in the white-blue light of the fishtank, the quiet noise of the filter. But Rook wasn’t going to fall asleep again so what the hell was Dutch thinking, it was far too soon.

Only his eyes were closing again, and one of those pills must have been a decent sedative because that was that.

 

 

-

 

 

 

The fourth time he woke up for his medicine, Dutch forced him onto his feet and made him walk around the living room, cursing the whole way and basically hobbling from how his limbs had stiffened up from who knew how many hours of lying prone. Torture over with, he led him into the kitchen and sat him down at the table for a thin bowl of soup (the can sitting on the counter) with buttered bread.

Dutch being Dutch, he waited until Rook had a mouth full of soup before he asked, “you gonna tell me what the fuck happened?”

Rook being Rook, he calmly swallowed rather than choked, treated himself to another spoonful before he said, “it was a really fucking terrible day, Dutch,” since that was the truth.

Dutch nodded, buttering his own slice of bread, then another and sticking them together and bypassing the soup entirely. “That why the Seeds have an army out looking for you and, from what I heard, John had you tossed out a helicopter?”

Another mouthful of soup. “I jumped.”

Dutch sighed. “Yeah, you know what? Of course you did. You fucking maniac. And why did you jump out of a helicopter, en-goddamn-lighten me.”

Rook tapped his spoon against the side of the bowl. “… John Seed was in it.”

Dutch nodded. That made sense. That fit perfectly into his worldview as A Reason to hurl yourself out of aircraft.

Rook put it down and slid the bowl down away from him in case Dutch flipped the table or something equally melodramatic. “He came to get me, stitched up my leg. Was going to take me to confession, his whole deal. And.”

 

John’s face. Rook the miracle right in front of him and _you sure, you sure, you sure_

Him.

 

He’s _ours._

 

Rook felt a frown try to settle on his face. “It’s possible,” he allowed, “that things got out of control.”

Dutch glared. “Oh?” He reached out for the radio sitting at the end of the table – there were lights on it, measuring voices turned all the way down. “You think so?” He turned it up steadily.

_… th bank clear, moving south-by-south-east, over_

_This is fourteenth leader, signs of mountain lion_

_Two sinners on the road, no other sign_

Voices constantly cutting in over one another on whatever frequency Dutch had tracked down, people reporting to each other. On their search, he realised quickly. The search for Rook, organised and methodical the way peggies weren’t.

Jacob’s, then. Or Joseph’s, the ones he hadn’t met yet but were probably creatively horrifying.

Rook leaned back in his chair and ignored how it creaked in protest. “Dutch,” he said. His throat clicked. Tried to close. “… Dutch,” he repeated. “They’re.”

Mine, he didn’t say, because they weren’t. Never had been. They hadn’t, they hadn’t, they _hadn’t_.

His breath out was a shaky rush.

Dutch reached back for the radio. “Try this, then.” He twisted the dial, settled on another frequency and then started eating his bread, not so much as looking towards the canned soup.

 _“So you’re not on the south bank, then,”_ John, conversational but strained. _“How many friends you’ve made, since you came here. The explosions have made you popular, haven’t they,_ Rook _,”_ and since when did he know his fucking name. _“I hope you know how_ childish _this is.”_

Dutch took a bite of the buttered bread. Rook folded his hands on the table in front of him. “They know I’m alive,” he said, just for Dutch because of course they did. He’d seen Joseph, even though Joseph couldn’t have seen him. He’d used the bliss and found the wall, somehow, the wall holding Rook in with _Bitten_ and _dangerous_ and _permanent_ , because the only thing worse for a broken bond than being rejected was being wanted.

But the Seeds wouldn’t know that. Not the three of them, tied together so effortlessly and poised to take his mind apart.

“He’s been talking since I found you,” Dutch said. Critically, another observation on the many failings of John Seed that he probably had listed somewhere. “Even worse than usual. What the hell did you do when you jumped out of that helicopter, tell him you’re his real dad?”

Rook shrugged, reaching cautiously for his bread again before, “ _I have your dog. He’s_ chewing _everything_ ,” and Rook saw red, had the transceiver in his hand and up to his mouth before Dutch could stop him, was deep and loud and mad.

“You even scratch my dog and I swear to god, I will tear you to pieces and leave you scattered on Joseph’s _fucking_ lawn, do you hear me, I will rip the skin off your fucking face and nail it to his precious church _doors_!”

It had come right down from deep in his chest and echoed, just a bit, from the force of it. Consonants bouncing off the concrete walls, colliding in the empty space.

Dutch’s butter sandwich was frozen halfway to his mouth. Rook didn’t look at his face, staring into the opposite wall with his fingers still twitching, spasming a little on the transceiver.

“… Holy shit,” Dutch said, honestly sounding a little proud.

“ _Deputy_ ,” John said in a sigh, an exhalation of the word he’d taken to suit himself.

Rook clenched his jaw, holding the transceiver closed in his palm, tapping his knuckles against his closed mouth. “That just came out,” he said sidelong to Dutch, who hadn’t asked.

 _“Where are you?”_ Rustle-rustle, someone moving, voice a little louder next time. “ _Did hurling yourself out of my helicopter make you_ feel _better?_ ” A bit mean because John couldn’t help himself really and Rook couldn’t either, because there was an almost-charming kind of honesty in that, until, _“… Are you safe, Rook?”_

Rook closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his free hand. Fuck. Fucking _John_.

Dutch shook his head. “Well shit, Peaches, guess you can have that crockpot if the risk is your dad here ripping my face off and nailin’ it to things,” he said, taking a bite of his sandwich. Peaches’ ears flicked under Rook’s free hand, the heavy weight of her large head resting on his thighs and her eyes half-closed with bliss from the scratching he hadn’t realised he’d picked up again.

 _Deputy, deputy, deputy_.

 _“Rook,_ ” hard with warning, John not happy to wait because really, what else was new.

Dutch reached out and turned the volume down, the lights showing how it was picking up more and more of John’s voice, probably yelling or threatening or whatever the hell else he did when Rook denied him his attention.

“So,” he said. “Let’s talk about all that.”

 

So,

 

it had been the right call, Rook explained, and then he told him why.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why am I awake, my guys? Who even knows. But I wasn't going to be happy with this, so up it went.
> 
> Also, John getting weird and conversational on the radio to a totally unresponsive Rook is my favourite fanon(canon?) coping mechanism for him. Having a bad day? Better threaten Rook. Having a good day? Better threaten Rook. Awake? What is the deputy up to, where's he at. Also, bitchy nurse Dutch.


	10. fix the sky to meet me

 

Joseph Seed was not a man to fuck around.

By the halfway through the night, Rook’s head was starting to pound. His mouth tasted like pennies. The pressure in his skull felt like fingers trying to pry their way out and he knew somehow it wasn’t just a headache, that it was the Seeds pressing their way through their own barrier like they could burn it down with the rest of the county when it had been their fault in the first place, when all of it had been them. Forcing their way through to reach him with the vicious, single-minded determination they did everything.

So this was what was like to be wanted, some traitorous voice whispered in the back of his mind, and Rook would have slapped himself if he thought it’d make a damn difference. But calls were coming in over the radio from the free people of Hope County, coded messages of concern that almost drowned John’s more persistent, more blatant monologues out – his threats, the narration and the search still going on (say something say _something_ ) and it was petty, it was spiteful but Rook knew how much more painful it was to speak, to scream and have no one even turn to look, so he kept his retorts to himself. Let John talk himself hoarse, run ragged to find him (not going to _give up_ ). But he didn’t mention Boomer again, always too smart for his own good and something that made it a little easier and a lot harder at once because after all, silence could be so much worse and Rook knew how edges cut both ways.

The TV broadcasts started three days later, when they hadn’t been found yet, when Rook was about sick of canned soup and antibiotics and the goddamn silence. They started on the third day but Rook didn’t find out until the fifth because Dutch did actually sort of like him, enough to make him take agonising fucking walks when all Rook wanted was to lie down (lie _down_ ) and got more and more willing to resist because the painkillers were getting fewer while the walls got closer, the ceiling lower. As Rook started getting _bored_ , a luxury he had long been unable to afford and had forgotten how to cope with.

He was watching the fishtank and counting the minutes until he could next take something for the headache when Dutch decided to bite the bullet. The fish were all named, like their wirefrond skeletons could support the spare syllables, strangely mundane things – fucking _Keith_ – given by Dutch’s grandson (old letters in a drawer, _you’re scaring him_ and _I’m sorry, dad_ ) so not something to be made fun of. Dutch came in with the remote he’d hidden, that Peaches kept finding and dragging back where it belonged like Boomer’s absence wasn’t a hole held just in Rook, and he sat on the end of the couch by Rook’s bent knees with it just held in his hands.

“It’s almost six,” he said. Rook glanced at the clock, a Birds of Montana relic and sure, it was almost sparrow p.m., a hair until lark. “There’s something you gotta see.” Dutch not turning towards him, just sitting with his hands, the remote in his lap. “They haven’t been able to find you, so this started a while back. It’s on every three hours,” and that sunk in just a little heavier because Rook knew a lot about the power of routine, how it restructured the brain around habit-turned-fact, became teaching new realities to grey matter until it learned how to behave. Something in the last interval of three that had taught Dutch to look away.

“Let’s watch it, then.” Rook already on the couch after all, Peaches held as an anchor and rumbling in her sleep and leaving him as ready as he’d ever be.

The TV looked like it didn’t have input hooked up for a moment. A blank black screen, the green of stuck pixels in the corner.

And then Joseph spoke.

“Believers, rejoice.” Voice filling it all up right up to the church ceiling, all the way to Rook across the county. “The final sign has come. Our family will become whole.”

The lights, suddenly on, showing three people kneeling in front of a white backdrop, the black eight-point form of Eden’s Gate behind them.

Burke.

Joey.

Staci.

Burke calm and unbound but still down on his knees, his eyes black-blank like a doll’s. Staci, bruised but whole and his hands cuffed in front of him. Joey, tear tracks long dried on her face and a bandage on her upper arm, both of them tied to her sides.

Rook slowly sat up. Joseph walked on-screen in those preacher’s white rolled-up sleeves, high collar and his dark vest, that goddamn cross swinging from his hand and the fucking yellow sunglasses – all of him the same, unchanged by months of fire and grief and all so _deliberate_ – a rock in a sea of inconstancy. “And once my family is reunited in this word, as we were in the thoughts of God,” Joseph said, assured the three of them, hand touching Staci’s shoulder just briefly on the way past, “we will be content. Sinners and the baptised alike, free – to join us or to turn away from where we stand, whole and unified as we were meant to be – to turn their face from _God_ , He who watches and _judges_ you now.” Gaining momentum, that gospel preached to an audience of three, to Rook. Up there in the nosebleeds, Joseph’s piercing look through the camera. _Judges you_. You, Rook, end fucking parenthesis and Joseph smiling with that strange, distant way he did in his religious fervour. Almost abstract, like it was happening to someone else or meant for someone else, the you behind your skin. Rook, in this case, on Dutch’s couch with Keith the fish and the pounding in his skull. “Return my family,” Joseph said, urged with his outstretched hands, ready to receive benediction, “return, my family. So that then the unfaithful and faithful may know peace, may walk free to await the Collapse amongst our own people, that we may seek out to hold dear our brothers and sisters in what time is left, _then_ \- ” the pause with his hand raised, the tilt of his head, “and not before.”

And then it was over.

They sat there in silence for a long, long time, Keith the fish hunting for food in fake coral, the only one of them game to move.

“You know what he’s saying,” Dutch said in the end, and

“Yeah,” Rook replied, because he did. Dutch nodded. Turned the TV off and stood, knees cracking and, “don’t forget to walk,” he said, and left the room without pushing it, without looking at him once, his brain aware of a new reality and making space for it.

 

 

 

The county for Rook, and not before.

 

Yeah, okay.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook thought it over while he walked, small and painful steps taking him from room to room, the same circuit over and over.

 

It wasn’t a bad deal.

 

He had to give them that. It was actually a pretty fucking amazing deal if you didn’t live in the world they did – the one they expected to collapse (the _Collapse_ ) – and didn’t see what you were giving up as a moot point anyway. It was already doomed as far as they were concerned, so from their perspective they were offering nothing that had any value anyway. Something for nothing, throwing away their savings on judgement day for all the good money would do the morning after. His friends, the valley, the whole goddamn county for Rook. They’d be stupid not to take it.

Rook wandered through the hall and down into the security room, back out again, and wondered when his life had become worth dozens of others when for years it hadn’t been worth considering. How his resistance and his viciousness (his escape) had made him something interesting, finally, made him something worth bargaining for. Made his way through the kitchen back to his spot in the living room and wished he was stupid enough to make the easier call, could hear well enough to hear what everyone else had all along.

Save your own goddamn life. Jessie, the cougar, a dying girl, Rachel Jessop and not Rook, not once.

God –

he wanted to go home.

Rook wanted to go home, and he let his head fall back heavy against the back of the couch and he closed his eyes. He wanted upper-case Home, singular-Home, the kind his life and his culture and the fucking English language had taught him existed as a place of safety, the place of quiet and safe and his and that he didn’t actually have. He’d rented a house when he got to Hope County, it not being an apartment kind of place, and he’d kept his clothes and his books in it and the bed he used but didn’t think of fondly because it was all stopgap measures that he’d built to keep a wound inside from rotting, festering, an antiseptic kind of life meant to keep him going because he wasn’t going to get better. Which wasn’t to say he couldn’t be happy, that he hadn’t been happy, but it was a lower-case home and not the kind the marrow of his bones was telling him he needed. Like he was talking on the phone and kept wandering from room to room, brain telling his legs to find the other person when the house stood empty of them, his body wandering now from place to place looking for Home because some part of him told him he could hear it so it had to be real.

He wondered if Joseph was happy in his church. If John really did sleep in that ridiculous mansion or if Jacob’s nest of barbed wire and wolves kept some part of him secure, because clearly Rook’s phone line was getting interference.

He sighed, let Peaches come back up onto the couch and watched Keith the fucking fish and he thought,

 

Yeah. Okay.

 

 

-

 

 

Dutch had radioed ahead, and they’d both pretended that he’d waited for Rook’s say-so. Told them that Rook would be in touch, and in the end Rook sat across from Dutch in the kitchen, across from the crockpot on the floor where Peaches had gotten her way in the end. His leg stretched out to be comfortable, the radio between them and Mary May’s voice at two in the morning the night before, _don’t you even think about it_ when Rook already had. Jess sitting outside the bunker where she’d come just after dawn, after she’d belted Dutch across the mouth and settled into the silence of someone with only bad choices left.

‘It’s better if it’s on your terms,’ Dutch said. Older than he had been yesterday, ten years further gone every three hours, decades piling up and Rook, ready to stop it all before he turned to dust in front on him, aged out of his skin. Rook nodded. That note in his mind gone quiet, strained to snapping and a point, an end-point he could move towards and not just the waiting.

Hope County for Rook. Something for nothing.

Dutch rubbed at his jaw. He hadn’t shaved. “Escape if they pull shit. Make them keep you properly because being fucking _bastards_ just makes you cause problems, makes you more trouble than you’re worth. It’s the fighting that made them offer us anything at all. Keep it up.”

Rook nodded again, acknowledged what he knew already, that push-pull(-bleed) at the base of his skull and the backs of his ribs that spoke to him of violence, bracing him from the inside out for pain. Let Dutch talk like Mary May had put up her sign ( _no peggies_ ) so long ago – the things people said for saying, not for hearing. He wondered if Dutch had thought about it, though, if he’d let himself. What else Rook could do to be more trouble if he had not yet exceeded that worth, clawing and shooting and burning his way through their precious Path, their people, the kingdom of ashes he had left in his wake.

Or maybe he already had, he thought with a humourless smile. Maybe it would be better if they just killed him, called it _sacrifice_ and let others think they’d ever claimed him, had him to lose.

He picked up the transceiver. “I’m here,” he said, and unsure of how to throw your life at someone, just spelled it out clearly. “Let the officers go first. Once they’re released, I’ll come to you and you back off from everyone else. Any sign of trouble and I’ll see how much I can burn down on my way out. See if I can finally have a go at that statue, maybe.”

No hesitation, no wait. Broadcasts every three hours and not three seconds for his answer.

“Rook,” Joseph replied. “We’ve been waiting,” and Rook surprised everyone when he just laughed (and laughed and laughed).

 

 

-

 

 

They let Staci go first, bright and early in the morning. Jacob, ever the model of fucking efficiency and Staci on the radio, voice hollow and tired and absolutely _furious_ in a way too heavy for him, that sharp-tongued Staci hadn’t had the gravitas for before. Came on over Eli’s radio to confirm (don’t you dare, don’t you do this you _fuck_ , you _stupid fuck_ ) and enough to make Rook smile just a little, fully dressed and ready to go, breath fogging in the early morning air.

Burke next, down by the river and just soft sobs over the radio. Earl trying to calm him and Burke, unwilling to be calmed because what had he done wrong, what hadn’t he done that would have made her keep him, what had been done to him that made the smile leak from Rook’s face.

Joey at last, who just said “thanks, Rook,” quietly and a lifetime ago he would have liked to hear Joey speak softly to him, if he’d thought about it, but instead he clasped Dutch’s hand, got into the white truck and made his way back to the road, bumping and jolting over the trail until he hit asphalt.

Dawn fog still sliding away through the trees. Birds singing. Peaches pressing her face to the air conditioner and, John’s impatient, “ _well?_ ” over the radio. Hasty, not a man who liked to let go once he got his hands on something, not used to having to.

“On my way,” Rook sent back steadily, shifting into fourth when the road straightened out past the bridge, clutch sticking just a bit. Which made sense for a truck he’d run off the road a week earlier, the one Jess had sprayed _SINNER_ on the sides in red that morning while Dutch helped Rook up the stairs, paint still dripping down where it had branded itself over Eden’s Gate on the side because Rook could be a little petty and Dutch had kept trying to say something before he left and couldn’t, that new habit-turned-fact settled too firmly already. The tight hug he’d dragged Rook into, a poor substitute but more than he’d expected and Rook’s hand, not at all shaking on the gearshift because the county for Rook, that was fair.

 

 

The road to the church seemed longer without Nancy in the front, filling the space with who’d done what and terrifying revelations about pregnancy Rook was never going to need – filling up the close spaces between trees with her laughter whenever he responded, that deep voice that always surprised her and fucking _Nancy_ , he thought with a sigh and missing her a little, the way you could a friend who wasn’t anymore.

He’d kill her, he decided at last, after the bridge and rounding the grassy knoll that separated the church from the main road, two peggies coming out to open a heavy metal gate for him. Drove past where they’d landed (one warrant, five officers for Joseph goddamn Seed) and he couldn’t help but slow for a second at the sight of the white buildings clustered beyond it. The high metal fences topped with barbed wire. The grass trodden down into dirt, the small church beyond. Someone came out, a woman in red and a bandolier across her chest and she waved him on, steering him onto a turn that took him onto a gravel road instead, winding down through densely-packed trees. Radio on and windows down so Peaches didn’t get carsick and he turned it down when, slowing down to take the turns, he could make out the words because honestly he was so fucking sick of hearing about the bliss, about Faith. After another hard turn he was suddenly out in the open again, and he saw the house.

Two stories. White wood. Dark roof and honestly more like the church than he was comfortable with. People out the front on the lawn, a little overgrown and enough for flowering weeds to speckle it white and yellow and all so intentional, because no garden was wild and charming without the same kind of effort that artistic bedhead took to achieve. And the peggies, watching him as a small crowd, more tidy than he was used to and conspicuously unarmed. Joseph’s, he thought, eyeing them as he put the car into park – Joseph’s, and therefore not to be underestimated. All of it too picturesque until he shifted and caught a glint from somewhere high, felt amused despite himself because he didn’t know of any postcards with snipers in the trees.

He opened the door in time for one of them to call, “Herald!” breathlessly and the group as a whole to move back from him, even though he raised his hands to show he wasn’t holding anything.

“Here for Joseph,” he called. When this prompted no response, he added, “Rook for Joseph,” because they seemed to not know what to do and honestly, he’d sort of expected Joseph to be out the front and with the headache, the light shining from the white house just making it worse, he wasn’t up to improvising. He should have brought sunglasses but he hadn’t, so he took a few steps forward, approaching the house cautiously.

“He’ll be here,” and Rook turned to see Jacob round the side of the house, face blank and red hair bright in the sunlight, all of him somehow shocking in the light of day. He’d been cast in red and shadow in Rook’s memories of him, tall and strong and menacing – even out in the open, out in the sun, his eyes weren’t bright blue like John’s. That deep-water colour in a face of scars layered over handsome features and there, just standing there, that way he did with feet planted, always ready to move. The dark red of his hair and his beard, the features of him jumping out at Rook because his mind was suddenly jumping from point to point to manage it, unable to take it all in at once in the sudden whirl his thoughts were into (kill _cull **again**_ ).

Rook stopped dead. Dug his heels in like someone was planning to push him, not willing to take the risk they wouldn’t. Jacob but shifted in place just slightly, something that could have been a precursor to a step or to reaching for the box of agony in his fucking pocket and Rook couldn’t help it, he was already moving backwards, Peaches stumbling back where she’d come up behind without him noticing.

“Get out of my way.”

The small group of peggies parted like the red sea for John coming from behind in his after-drinks navy, his vest and his coat with the planes, all that charisma making it into his bizarre recruitment video because he wasn’t leering, not smirking but fucking beaming, teeth white against his dark beard and not a trace of duplicity in his face as he spread his arms wide. “Rook,” he said, so happy to see him. “You came.”

Rook faced him but couldn’t help his eyes flicking to Jacob; paranoid Jacob was going to move again, to reach for something. One Seed to another, and back. Felt how it made him look hunted, like prey, but unable to stop. “Did I have a choice?”

“Oh, you did,” John told him, that violating familiarity in him, Jacob the bizarre background to an already strange exchange. “And you, Rook – you said _yes_.” He always said that word with reverence, enough that it made Rook feel he was something too personal for him to be watching. Like a private moment – god and a priest, John communing with his soul out on display for anyone to see.

He came back to himself because John had reached up and up to brace his hands on either side of his face. “You said yes,” he repeated, and probably didn’t mean it for what Rook heard – that reminder of blame, that Rook had walked right into this himself. He eyed him critically. “Get inside before you fall down. I’ve brought my doctor – Sampson, you remember him.” Smirked, flicked his fingers. “Or maybe you don’t.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” Rook said, rumbled out, and John looked at him with something too much like real affection.

“You don’t?” he asked, and then he reached forward and had grabbed the side of Rook’s leg hard before he could stop him and everything went red-dark fuzzy for a second, Rook collapsing forward with a cry, grabbing at John to stay upright.

“I thought so,” John hummed a little breathlessly from Rook’s weight, letting Rook grasp his shoulders and lean onto him heavily, so fucking heavy and John just planting his feet, hardly wincing at all and his hand still gripping the side of Rook’s thigh, that thunderbolt of pain still coursing through him and making him weak at the knees. “You’re being _stubborn_ ,” he said into Rook’s ear, where how he’d bent, how he’d crumpled down had put it by his face. “But you’re going to come inside, and we’re going to see what those backwards resistance hicks have done to your leg, and Jacob’s not going to touch you.” The hand on his leg came up smoothly to his waist and just pressed to his side, above his stitches and casual, like he had touched Rook a thousand times. A way that would have been possessive were it not so certain – proprietary, then. Touching something he already owned since yeah (something for nothing). “Not even once,” John said, soft and vicious and Rook glanced at Jacob again, couldn’t help himself. His had his arms folded across his broad chest, scars down his forearms on display. Body language just saying “ready” but face unreadable.

“Where’s Joseph?” Rook asked, trying to pull himself free of John without aggravating the injury more now that he’d just gone and stuck his goddamn fingers in it, failing when John just took a step forward and was right back into his space.

“Sleeping,” John replied. “Trying to find you. He’ll be awake soon.”

The headache. The fucking headache. Joseph Seed, not a man to fuck around.

 _You’ll kill me_ , Rook wanted to say, his doctor said years earlier with That Look on his face and bad news, always such bad news in Rook just waiting to happen. Breaking down the wall where it was built into the structure of Rook, where he’d grown up and out and around it.

He didn’t, though.

“Where’s my dog?” he asked instead, and let John drag him up the steps. Pretended not to hear the door swing open and shut once more after them, Jacob’s presence behind sealing him in more definitively than any lock.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boomer, nearby, senses He Is Needed. Or maybe he doesn't, god know what's happening with that little dude.
> 
> Chapter title and my recommendation is When The Night Is Long by Shelby Merry.


	11. drove out the sparrows

 

Sampson was the White Coat peggie from before, the one with nicer clothes, neater hair and _ENVY_ carved down the side of his neck. He was waiting for Rook in a simple living room – a few couches in high quality but worn fabric, neutral tones against the white walls, the hardwood floor. A few overstuffed bookcases, a fireplace, no television. The eight-point cross on the far wall and the family portrait of the Seeds, all four of them, on the mantel, cast in sunlight from the wide windows. Rook let John lead him across and push him to sit on the couch, while Sampson dug through a large medical kit on the coffee table and very carefully didn’t look at either of them.

“I’m getting Joseph,” John told him, or maybe Sampson, maybe just declaring his intent to the room at large. “Don’t move.” Talking to Rook, then, but the room felt much larger when John wasn’t in it anymore. There was more air in it for Rook to start taking deep breaths again, to uncurl his hands where they had started to fist at his sides.

Sampson took a moment to turn to him. Rook could see how he too took a steadying breath first. “Show me the wound, please,” he said, almost so quietly that Rook couldn’t hear him. But he had, so Rook started the arduous process of taking off his too-short borrowed jeans.

Sitting in his underwear on Joseph Seed’s couch was a surreal experience. Rook had to restrain the urge to laugh, something hysterical and shrill and a weakness he didn’t want exposed with the rest of him, and Sampson pulled some gloves on to press around the edges of the long gashes. “These aren’t looking too bad, though there’s some shoddy stitches here,” Sampson muttered. “No sign of infection, and you’re otherwise in good health.”

“I’ve been on antibiotics,” Rook said.

“What kind of antibiotics?” Sampson asked, risking a look at Rook’s face.

“Green ones,” Rook replied. “Half-green, half-white.”

Sampson looked like he’d tasted something sour. “We’ll need to find out what those were. It’s dangerous to stop a course of antibiotics before it’s completed.”

Rook shrugged. “Okay.”

“Have you been taking painkillers?” And it was Rook’s turn to explain Dutch’s unmarked white pills, the ones he’d been taking before, what he was pretty sure was moonshine in his coffee when Dutch was getting sick of him climbing the walls. Sampson’s face getting more and more horrified because he’d clearly been a city doctor before all this and hadn’t come across people distilling their own gut-rot in their basements for use as needed – _take two,_ given with a shot glass and a wink, _and see me in the morning_.

“I want dream suppressants,” he said when he was finished, but Sampson pretended not to hear because, after all, he was John’s doctor. So the rest of his physical was spent in silence, just the sting of disinfectant and the tug of bandages for company as all the reply Sampson was going to give him.

Rook had settled in for an awkward wait afterwards, unsure whether to stay on the couch after Sampson had put the last clasp on the bandages around his leg and he’d struggled the jeans back on, when he heard the distinct sound of claws on hardwood so his head shot up, turning to face the entryway. Boomer lunged into view, scrabbling against a lead firmly clipped to a leather collar, just seconds before the person he was straining against followed. Rook’s heart seized at the sigh of Jacob, his military jacket and his fucking combat boots, effortlessly resisting Boomer’s attempts to drag him into the room and across to Rook.

Not Jacob. Not with his dog. Rook’s hand tightened convulsively on the arm of the couch as Jacob reached down and unclipped the lead but slipped his hand under Boomer’s collar to keep him in place.

“Herald Jacob, sir! You can’t – I mean,” Sampson corrected very quickly and very carefully, looking at the floor with his head a little tilted like how an animal might show submission. The brain not sure how to deal with a situation, reverting to instincts – bare your neck, lower your eyes, if you can be small then you can make it. “Dogs aren’t – that dog is very large, and the deputy’s nowhere near healed, I don’t think it’s a good-“

“Get out,” Jacob said simply, and Sampson obeyed at a pace just barely more walk than run, past where Boomer’s collar was held firmly at the back by Jacob’s hand. His whole grey-black body wiggling enthusiastically with _yes! hello! where have you been? hello!_ and then shifting his paws along the ground because he wanted to go forward _so bad_ but couldn’t so he went down and pressed his belly to the floor, stuck his butt up like he was about to pounce. Jacob just leaning over further to accommodate, making sure he didn’t hang himself with his own collar.

Rook glanced at Jacob, then back at Boomer. His good boy, right there, held by _Jacob_ who broke things, tortured wolves (twisted men) into different shapes and let them loose as weapons for him to use as he saw fit.

Boomer whined desperately.

Rook licked his lips. “Boomer,” he said cautiously, and Jacob raised his eyebrows – _you asked for_ it – and let him go. A grey-black blur that hurtled into Rook’s chest, drove the air right out of him and then splayed against him and his eagerly open hands, Boomer trying to make as much patting happen at once as he could. Rook clung to him tightly, letting Boomer lick his arms and press up against him and he wasn’t going to cry because he was just a stupid goddamn dog but he buried his face in his fur with burning eyes and just breathed in, long and ragged. “I’m so glad you’re okay, buddy,” he managed, voice thick because it was Boomer and he was alright, unless. Unless he wasn’t.

He was pressing at Boomer’s body all over before the thought had even fully sunk in, tilting his face back to see his eyes (pupils normal, no redness) and checking his teeth while Boomer panted happily, having the time of his life. Nothing like the crazed bloodlust of the Judges but how could he know, how could he really know whether Jacob had killed something critical, right at the core of him.

“He’s a good dog,” Jacob said, and he was leaning against the archway with his arms folded when Rook looked up, the broad kind of masculine that the armed forces could make of men by chiselling them into the right shape and discarding the rest. “Undisciplined, though.” He had a perpetually mocking tilt to his lips that made it almost a smirk, but the same hard eyes from a year before, watching him leave; weeks before, watching him writhe and drown.

Rook didn’t realise he was holding onto Boomer just that little bit too hard until Boomer started wriggling again, shuffling in place to get some breathing room. Jacob didn’t flinch when Peaches let out a growl, coming around him from wherever she’d been exploring in the house. He didn’t even change his stance, just turned his head to look at her making her way past him like a mountain lion sneaking up on you was a normal thing – an amusing thing, by the look on his face. _Do you think that impresses me_ while Rook just watched (and begged and _bled_ ).

Boomer shifted. Rook loosened his grip again, arms starting to ache with the tension held there.

“Did you hurt him?” he asked. Couldn’t help himself. Had to know before Boomer burrowed his way back into his routine and realistically, back into his blankets at night, where he felt safest. Made Rook feel the same, a gun with the safety on even while the barrel still cooled. “Like the wolves?”

Jacob’s mouth twisted, no less mocking for it. “Does he look like one of my wolves?”

Rook, anger coming out too fast, so much faster than he could stop it. “Did I?”

Jacob’s fingers tapped his arm twice where they were still folded across his chest, but the rest of him stayed in place. “More than you’d think,” he said, with a bitter smile and Rook felt it, he felt like one with his lips trying to curl back and show teeth when he couldn’t, when he had to learn to be harmless again, when a side door opening caught his attention.

Joseph Seed stepped in, worn jeans and boots and no goddamn shirt and Rook had no idea where to look, where to let his eyes land because it was obscene the way Joseph Seed could wear his body like another weapon, surprising muscle under skin that seemed so much more naked than anyone else’s for being exposed. Sins and condemnation, symbols spelt all over him and Rook feeling like a voyeur for even seeing it, intimate history over him (and so much skin) so he just tried to keep his eyes on his face, the pale eyes and the pulled-back hair as safe as any part of Joseph just because Rook had seen them before. He only realised he’d stood when his calves hit the couch where he’d tried to step back, Boomer splayed happily on the couch where he knew he was Not Allowed to be because Jacob had to go and be right, Boomer had no fucking discipline and Rook had nowhere to back down to.

“Rook,” Joseph said from too near him too soon, and suddenly Rook was leaning down, pulled by Joseph’s hand on the side of his face, the back of his neck and pulling him down for what Rook thought in one terrified moment might be a kiss but instead was just a gentle press of Joseph’s forehead to his. His eyes closed automatically because being that close to someone’s face just wasn’t comfortable and that only made it worse because he could hear Joseph’s breathing, slow and steady and he became aware of a faint woodsy scent that was him, so far into Rook’s space. Made his warm hands suddenly seem more present, the one at the back of his neck sliding to the side to mirror the other. “Welcome,” Joseph said quietly and where the _fuck_ was Rook supposed to put his hands?

“Hi,” he said, muttered, low like he could hide the word in its own inadequacy.

Joseph pulled back but his touch lingered for a moment, too personal again by half, and he gestured for Rook to sit. So Rook took the middle of the couch, hoping Joseph would go for the armchair and John would fucking – stand, or something, maybe stand by Jacob for all the way he’d glared before, but instead John took the other side and Joseph just sat on the coffee table, weight leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees where they bumped into Rook’s if he moved wrong, and Joseph explained to him the world Rook had chosen.

 

His choice, he repeated, and knew exactly which end of _something for nothing_ he was.

 

It was made clear. Rook would be baptised. He would go to confession, and join their church, and he would not try to escape. No end-date. No endings. Just the baptism first, and everything else to follow, words carved to him and a path laid out that he'd been so sure to burn down. Simple. “Once you have healed,” Joseph noted, which was at the top of the list for surprises of the day so Rook was off-guard enough for,

“what are you going to do with me?”

to just come right out. Awkward-bare, all elbows and knees like he was seventeen again and being outgrown by his own goddamn bones.

“’Do with you’,” John repeated, and when the hell had he put his arm along the back of the couch, when had he angled his body just-so towards Rook, so casual it had to be deliberate and open enough for a knife between the ribs. Insulting for it.

Rook glanced at him. “Honestly, I thought you’d kill me, or brainwash me. Again.” John’s look turned venomous. “In which case, if I get a say in the matter, I’d take the bullet. If it’s all the same to you,” he added over his shoulder to Jacob where he stood watching in silence.

Joseph just looked at him for a very long time. Stared into his eyes, safe from behind his yellow sunglasses while Rook tried not to blink. “I don’t believe in any of this,” Rook added, since he’d already gotten started. “And I’m not going to.”

Joseph leaned forward, just a little – voice lowered like he was imparting some truth, that needle probing for a vein. “You think so little of your worth. But you are not a means to an end, Rook,” he said, one hand suddenly on Rook’s knee and clasping it the way he had the back of Rook’s neck, firm but not crushing, except for how it was. “You are the end, you are ours. You have come back to where you belong,” and no part of him was safe to touch, to pull his hand free, because so much of him was bare, tattoos and ink splayed over his lean torso and too much for Rook at once, like Joseph could pull him in through sheer physicality and end him with it.

“I don’t belong here,” Rook said, spoke to the birds inked symmetrically under Joseph’s collarbones because Joseph wasn’t listening, was overwhelming in his soft, certain syllables after so long of violence and noise (of grief). “Our connection isn’t _functional_ , I don’t belong to anyone.”

Not ever. Not once.

John, who Rook had almost forgotten was there (had almost _forgotten John Seed_ ). “That is where you’re wrong,” and getting irritated fast, getting _offended_ and armed with it. “You were _made_ for us.”

“I was,” Rook said, because there was something true in that, past-tense-true. “But I’m not that person anymore.” He tilted his head, looked at Joseph because John was heating to boiling next to him and Rook wasn’t sure what he could respond with if not violence – looked at Joseph instead and felt grateful for every inch separating him from that gaze, the unbearable intensity of it. “I was supposed to be,” he said, making it gentle, making it careful because all three Seeds were their own kinds of insane and he’d been so young when he learned what this pain felt like, had faced it with an anger and grief that was overwhelming even still growing into itself. Soft because the Seeds were grown men and full-grown feelings could be dangerous, could only be worse from dangerous men. “But that never happened. So I grew up without it, into someone else, and I’m not yours. You’re not mine. That’s how it is.”

There was a sharp _crack!_ from behind him but Rook couldn’t turn to see what it was when John had tensed to statue-stillness, when every threat sense he had was going as loud as it could, screaming to him to fight because he’d forgotten how to flee.

“God brought you to us,” Joseph said to Rook, again and still calm – the way it felt he had so many times, but hadn’t. “It was His will that we be reunited.”

Rook twitched, the careful line that Jacob had already crossed, that he had drawn so firmly in his fucking mind already starting to bend and waver (run red) under the gravitational force of the brothers Seed, all in one room. “It was your will,” he pointed out, steady. “It was the three of you who had a complete bond. It was you who took over the county, and who offered me this deal. Take some credit.”

“You’re the one who _agreed_ ,” John pointed out, leaning in towards Rook before Joseph stoppedd him with a raised hand, never taking his eyes off Rook.

“You were always meant to be with us.” Up so close so suddenly, all he could see just Joseph and those stupid fucking _sunglasses_ , “but you were lost to us, in our suffering. In our pride, and our fear, and our sin,” sounding so fucking _penitent_ , like the guilt was eating him up when Rook had seen men flayed alive and hung from trees, flung off cliffs and burned for the Joseph who had never flinched once and now this same Joseph just smiling at him sadly, hands back where his neck met shoulder, thumbs absently stroking the skin there up to just below his ear in sweeps. Warm hands and rough skin and Rook, who told himself to un-clench his own fingers, to be small inside his skin again like that was how it _worked_ because the space in the world was getting smaller and smaller, John to his left and Jacob at his back and Joseph there, with a kind and knowing face, like Rook was the one not facing reality. “You will see,” Joseph told him. “There is time.”

 

Rook had to give him that one. It was the rest he was worried about.

 

 

In the end, it had just moved on to practicalities, since Rook didn’t have enough spirituality to fill a conversation. His custody would be straightforward, since _simple_ was the wrong word.

In a development that surprised no one, Rook would be staying with Joseph for his recovery. John hadn’t been thrilled and Rook had pretended not to notice how John had ended up next even closer to him on the couch, enough that the outside of his leg was brushing against Rook’s when Rook tried to shift in place under eyes too hungry, too curious, the kind of curiosity a frog must have known just before someone cut it to pieces.  

John right there but Joseph first. _First_ being the worrying word, the worthwhile one in the sentence. John and Jacob would stay when they could, come back periodically once they went back to their regions, as was their custom – something Rook tried not to think of Eli learning, how it would have delighted his scheming mind – and then Rook would stay with someone else, left vague to him. Arrangements had been made, which Rook hadn’t truly understood until Joseph led him to a bedroom on the second floor and the bed inside the simple, clean space was one with a mattress big enough to fit him for the first time since he was thirteen and an alarming all of its own just for that.

There was a desk by the window (white curtains, nice view, sightline to a good sniper’s nest if you knew how to look), a plain wooden dresser on the opposite wall, and nothing else. Rook had nothing to unpack but Joseph left him there, had told John to wait downstairs where Rook could almost feel him moving around, Needles (run ragged, running-running). Jacob had gone outside once Boomer and Peaches had followed Rook upstairs, and Rook tried hard not to be relieved by that, had tried not to see where the entryway to the living room was painted white wood in frame and how when Rook passed it, it had been cracked right off the wall. He told himself instead it was relief that the bed did look too small again with Peaches rubbing her back happily on the plain white duvet, Boomer leaping up to ruin her fun a moment later, since Joseph clearly couldn’t anticipate everything, and then he sat on the soft mattress and tried to think of what to do when the game was over, and winning meant losing with a different hat, and didn’t know what to do.

They left him there until it got dark, and a knock on the door interrupted him where he’d just sat on the end of the bed and stared at his hands, hadn’t even noticed night falling around him until he had to squint for the light switch.

“Are you hungry?” Joseph asked, opening the door and Rook saw it had no lock. Not this kind of house, with bedrooms for children at the top of the landing and the master at the end, a space for families who shared bathrooms and dinner tables and for whom a locked door was an insult, a barrier that they didn’t need (not Those Kinds of People from little old ladies at the bus stop), and just another irrelevant thing for the Seeds to whom barriers meant nothing.

Rook shook his head, and Joseph just nodded and went to close the door before Rook stopped him.

“I won’t change my mind,” Rook told him, meeting his gaze, the shadows cast by the warm light from behind. “About any of it.”

Joseph looked back at him, the enemy within arm’s reach and a thousand miles away, those shadows and his sunglasses turning his blue eyes black, into that cold, distant stare like the space between stars.

“Goodnight, Rook,” he said, and he was smiling to himself when he closed the door.

 _I’d take the bullet_ , Rook had told them, and in the dark he touched Boomer’s sleeping back and thought of how many bullets had passed through his shell-casing hands, shook him awake so he’d make room for him on the bed.

 

 

It was a good night in the end, dreamless and dark. Fucking Joseph.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a short one. That felt like it took an age, for me and for Rook. Also, note to self, stop answering comments like you're a weird cryptid. Ha, I'm not going to do that. Chapter title from Sirens by Fleurie.
> 
>    
> Bonus:  
> [John.](https://78.media.tumblr.com/76ee8ef19c8a133e5f58cd39948a9679/tumblr_pdrgba0t8I1wkyly6o1_1280.jpg)


	12. my veins run with vinegar

 

 

Rook woke slowly, which was something that hadn’t happened in months, and without stiff legs from keeping them bent all night, which hadn’t happened in years. From where he was lying he could only see sky from the window, still shades of dark blue with some purple thrown in for variety. He squinted at it and rolled over, towards the scratching noise starting to sink in. Boomer wagged his tail hopefully and then settled when Rook just rubbed his face further into the pillow, heard it scratch against his stubble and sighed, dimly registering the door opening a crack and Boomer slipping out, the click of his claws getting further away down the hall while it closed behind him.

So that happened, Rook thought blearily, and barely noticed when Boomer snuck back onto the bed a while later.

He definitely noticed the cold nose stuck in his ear to say hello.

 

 

The next morning was made of a still room with the sun creeping in, the dull ache of his leg and a silent house. A ten-minute trip down the stairs because Sampson had put a clear kind of wrap over the wounds and then bandages on top of that, made it stiff and cumbersome. Especially for Rook, who wasn’t at his best in the morning.

But there was bacon in the fridge. Actual bacon, thick and pink and not even a little like spam (sorry, Dutch). _Holy shit_.

Rook rubbed his face because actually feeling his pupils dilate was honestly a bit weird. He made himself look past it, saw a pound or so of raw meat on the shelf as well that was just labelled “cat”, which he really hoped meant it was for Peaches. It wasn’t otherwise identified, just wrapped in clingwrap rather than store or butcher wrapping. He lifted it out and hefted it in his hand thoughtfully. Could you feed cat to a cougar? Was that biologically crossing a line - ethically?

After a moment, he unwrapped it and set it down on a plate on the floor, because Peaches didn’t give a shit about ethics and sort of knew what she could and couldn’t eat (bees the notable exception). She tucked in and so he turned back for his own breakfast, pretending for a second that he was considering toast or the untouched granola in the cupboard. Then he pulled some of the bacon out, turned and got blocked from the stove by Boomer’s pleading face, so turned back to get more. Got the eggs too, because he was a responsible adult and sometimes that meant lying to himself, sometimes that meant eating Joseph Seed out of house and home before he murdered you.

He’d cooked up half a plate of bacon by the time John strolled in from the hall, fully dressed sans his long coat, his expensive sunglasses and any awareness of how Rook tensed, how the air turned to glass around him. “Morning,” he greeted, reaching out to snag some bacon and leaning back against the counter next to him. Rook tucked his elbow in a little closer to his side, heard the crack of space between them fracturing under John’s attention. “Oh, deputy. You shouldn’t have,” John said, waving the bacon and a grin on his face as he crunched a particularly crispy piece of it, teeth white and sharp.

Boomer whined, heartbroken and drawing John’s attention immediately. Goddamnit. Rook tilted his head to stretch his neck and waited, because John was looking between the stove and Boomer too thoughtfully, too sharp for too early in the morning.

“… This was for him. You made bacon, for your dog,” John said slowly and fucking hell, Rook could _feel_ his rising glee.

Rook tossed some more bacon into the pan, because some things he’d need protein to deal with. “And you ate it,” he said, hating how it took his voice an hour in the morning to smooth out just because of how John stretched a little at the sound, long legs crossed at the ankles in front of him and leaning in like a goddamn sunflower to sunrise. “Guess what that makes you.”

After a tense moment, John laughed, loud and startling. Rook almost dropped his spatula. “Are you only eating this?” John asked with his grin stealing back over his face, stealing another piece of bacon hypocritically. He tsked. “Fighting the big bad cult,” a hint of a sneer, “battling scurvy all the way.”

Rook snorted before he could think better of it, slid more bacon from the sizzling pan to the plate. Hesitated before he put it back on the stove.

“… Are you trying to tease me?” he asked, keeping his voice bland. Ungenerous, no foothold of feeling for him.

Something flickered in John’s face – his smile tensed just a bit at the edges. “I don’t have to _try_ ,” he responded false-lightly, coming a beat too slow and his gaze too intent, “you make it so easy. Now get out of the way.”

 

 

John made eggs with cayenne and cumin like Pratt did when he dragged Rook out early after a night shift, the smell of spices reminding him of how Staci would given him shitty coffee while Rook waited, sat and mumbled to himself like he was still dreaming. Bad coffee and good eggs, the flavour of every other Saturday morning. Only Rook didn’t have coffee because he’d take a risk for bacon, for cat food, but preferred tea by wide enough a margin that he wouldn’t shuffle through Joseph Seed’s cupboards for instant grounds. John slid a plate of eggs over to him when he was done at the stove, interrupting Rook’s train of thought. Pushing Boomer’s questing head away from his own plate with a frown and a disconcerting familiarity as he sat down across from him at the table. “Your dog is a glutton,” he informed Rook archly. Judgementally.

“You ate his bacon,” Rook replied, staring at the eggs, since John had seemed aggressively pleased to make them and Rook had seen the shape of John’s aggression carved into people all over the county. “Quid pro quo.”

John smiled like a shark, eyes so blue and gleaming. “A contract made without mutual assent,” he said, “I’d get the entire pig in court.” Rook had never been one for _Law and Order_ , any of the lawyer shows, so he just tried the eggs instead of responding.

They were delicious. Rook washed them down with water (the ghost of bad coffee) and pretended not to notice John’s satisfaction at the sight.

“Sampson will be back to check on you tomorrow,” John said, watching him eat more than he had anything himself. “If the urge strikes you to jump out of another aircraft before then? Don’t.”

“He told me to rest it. Begged,” Rook corrected himself, turning his fork between his fingers. “Like his life depended on it.”

John stole a piece of his bacon despite having plenty on his own plate. “It does.”

 

In the end John got a call before Rook had finished, one that sharpened his consonants, clipped his words and made him stalk outside from the kitchen with the phone pressed tight to his ear. Rook stayed behind at the kitchen table and gave Boomer the leftover bacon, but not the eggs – pepper made him sneeze. And after that, he just sat there.

He didn’t know what to do next. Rook had never been a prisoner for long, not for the sake of being one. He’d been a prisoner as a side effect of other goals – to break him, to hurt him, help him – things he could respond to, react to. This was just,

Rook,

as an end and not a means, which felt uncomfortably like being meaningless when the word turned over in his mind. So Rook put the dishes in the sink, including Peaches’, and stopped to let Boomer out to piss (to chase some peggies) before he turned the tap to rinse them. Water running over his hands for a moment, gradually warming before realisation struck.

Joseph had hot water.

There – his pupils again. Rook turned the tap off and walked, because his leg hurt too much to goddamn run, made his slow and limping way up the stairs. He stopped just before he opened the bathroom, cast a look at the door to the master bedroom where he assumed Joseph slept. It was still closed. The bathroom door locked from the inside, and Rook could fit into the shower with just a little shuffling, bending just a bit for the showerhead and then the water turned on, scalding hot and drumming down and Rook’s life was suddenly glorious.

The groan he let out could probably be heard from the first floor (two buildings over), but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Being a prisoner might be manageable, he thought, bending his head forward so the water could hit the back of his neck. He would be taking a lot of showers, Rook decided. He’d let John carve him up as much as he wanted, as long as he could have this afterwards. Sampson would have to re-bandage his leg but this had to be what the plastic-like patch had been for.

Rook spent an age just standing there, muscle knots unravelling one by one but his head starting to hurt. A vicious ache building until the water went cold, and when he left the bathroom, Joseph’s door was still closed.

 

So, he thought. It’s like that then.

He went to get dressed.

 

 

-

 

 

Joseph emerged late in the afternoon, looking tired despite all the sleep Rook knew he was getting (the dreams he’d had). Came down in jeans in his boots, his thick belt and his white shirt on, which eased tension somewhere in Rook he hadn’t realised he was carrying. He didn’t speak much, a development that shocked Rook until he realised Joseph spoke in a succession of casual touches, couldn’t shut up – a hand brushed across his shoulder when he walked past Rook in the living room, another on his elbow when he moved past him for a plate, knee knocking against his under the table while they ate dinner, just the two of them, in silence. An easy language that Rook didn’t know, wasn’t fluent in and had no guidebook for, because if he’d ever been tactile he’d learned later not to be, tactile gone for tact and other people, eyes creased with discomfort and landed on his neck and _I’m sorry, I didn’t know_. He couldn’t even tell if it was deliberate or just the way Joseph moved, but the way Joseph ignored his flinches had to be, because he was too smart by half and didn’t miss a goddamn thing. Didn’t miss the way Rook was trying not to speak to him, because everyone knew that whoever spoke first in a negotiation started weaker for it.

Rook had learned about that studying interrogation at the academy. He didn’t know where Joseph had. Maybe from John, the cutting lawyer, who hadn’t come back to the house yet, made himself known in the occasional raised voice outside. Or Jacob, who knew exactly how to manipulate people into exactly what he wanted and was a fucking ghost as far as Rook was concerned, probably the one in the sniper’s nest outside.

He knew he couldn’t be the one to break the silence, but. He still cracked first, couldn’t stand next to Joseph and dry dishes like it was normal when even standing for too long was painful, the ache and the absence of noise just adding up.

“What am I supposed to do here?” he asked. “I don’t have anything. Everyone has a role and I’m just inside, waiting.”

Joseph hummed, handing him a plate from the soapy sink. “We all have a role,” he said, long Georgia-vowels and a preacher’s patience. “We will find yours.”

Rook narrowed his eyes, started drying anyway. “… I want books,” he said, instead of _I already found mine_ , or _I found it in accelerants,_ or most damningly, _I found it in setting fire to your things_ because Joseph would find a way to make that about their connection again, instead of Rook’s flawed approach to conflict resolution. “I need something to do while I can’t move much. If you’re really not going to shoot me,” he added, not above pettiness and maybe not petulance either.

Joseph nodded, pulled the plug for the drain and dried the last dish himself, both of them there doing the cleaning up after dinner while Joseph’s cult maintained itself for miles around them. “I’m sure we can find something that will suit you,” he said, and Rook wondered if he should specify _nothing religious_ but instead didn’t say anything, let Joseph press their foreheads together before he fled upstairs.

 

 

 

Rook woke up the next morning when Boomer crept back in and found a stack of C.S.Lewis books outside his door, worn hardcovers with someone else’s name almost completely faded from the flyleaf. Told himself it wasn’t a crack about lions while Peaches snored gently at the end of the bed.

 

-

 

 

The days settled into a routine. Boomer would let himself out in the morning, summoning someone with his scratching, and Rook would get up when he got back. Have breakfast with John if he was there ( _don’t give him anything_ , he made himself a _stone_ and John, more and more frustrated with his neutrality, biting for it and getting wild around the eyes) or more often sit with just Boomer and Peaches, and Joseph would either return from a sermon too early for Rook to contemplate or get up for one at noon, disappear for the rest of the day to do whatever cult leaders did. Joining him for dinner or, if he missed it, sitting on the end of the couch while Rook read through _Dawn Treader_ in silence, just the clock and the words and Joseph’s breathing, the scratch of his pen if he was writing in one of his notebooks, the click of beads when he shifted the hand with the rosary. Always there, in person or in the headaches (ever-aching) or in the way his scent lingered around the house. A saturation point that left Rook in some way proud he still flinched when Joseph touched his hair on the way past or wrapped a hand around his ankle if it got too near him, absent but not quite thoughtless (no, not Joseph).

Rook only ever saw Jacob at a distance. A flash of red hair out the window, the rough sound of his voice on the answering machine. Enough to remember he was there, that he was watching, but not enough to watch him back. It was worse when he didn’t, when the knowledge of Jacob exceeded the presence of Jacob, because Rook hadn’t seen him at all the day he’d come for him (until he had).

Boomer was getting lazy. Rook noticed the morning Sampson tucked away his kit and said, almost sobbed in relief, that after two weeks he was finally well enough to be baptised (to _confess_ ), and John’s mug cracked in his suddenly tight grip.

 

-

 

The arrangements had been made by the next morning, and Rook tried to figure out how to say he didn’t want to be baptised without seeming like he was being _uncooperative_ , like he wasn’t holding to the spirit of the deal. He’d ambushed enough baptisms to know that they poured bliss in the water first, let that high carry them through some of the confession afterwards and smooth the memory of it. But he also knew that the Seeds did things a certain way, had them a certain way (and always got them) so he talked to himself instead when they walked outside into the warm sunlight, grass soft on his bare feet. He told himself, he told himself.

It hadn’t been that bad, Rook told himself, feet getting heavier and heavier as he approached the river and the enraptured peggies grouped there. There were white flowers petals in the water and a haze above it, almost peaceful, so,

(It couldn’t have been that bad, because he was still alive, he’d made it, he hadn’t gone red at the edges and mad like the Angels, aching-raging-gone, so)

it hadn’t been that bad, he thought again when the water splashed at his heels. The sweet stink of bliss and Joseph, hands outstretched to him from where he stood waist-deep in water with John at his side, water dripping from the rosary wrapped around his palm, his wrist. It hadn’t, it hadn’t but “please,” he said to them, feet sticking on the shore. “Don’t make me do this,” and Joseph just waited. “Please,” he repeated when he reached him, but he was already being tilted backwards and the water closed over his face.

It was fine, for a moment. Cold, the blurred sight of Joseph and John above him through the water, the muffled sound of the water moving around him.

Warmth seeping in. A dull throb, like his heart had risen through his spine, and they pulled him up. He tried to wipe his face off and lunged for the bank, but John caught him first. “Wait,” he said, but there was red curling in around Rook’s vision so he just dragged himself free, shoving his way past to try and get out of the water and knees starting to buckle, turned again when someone caught at him and the world spinning too much when he did, a nauseating swim with a rush of adrenaline branching down his limbs.

 _He’s reacting to the bliss_ and Rook drawing in great gulping breaths because he could feel the pain waiting before it even hit, grasping at the person in front of him. Someone grabbed him under the arms and hauled him backwards even as he struggled to get out of their grip (out of his _skin_ ), suddenly weak legs dragging along the river floor while the high note in his mind descended back to him, shrill and piercing and turning into a scream before it cut off, left him in a gasp and it all started.

It hadn’t been that bad, he had told himself,

but it was.

Rook had been shrieking and struggling and he knew when his body came back to him in flashes, spine arching so hard it felt strained to snapping, saw-felt Jacob straddling his hips (heavy _heavy_ ) to hold them down hard, keep him pinned like a butterfly and force his hands down to his chest because he was raking them down his own skin. He couldn’t shift him, he couldn’t make it stop and Jacob wasn’t _budging,_

 _You’ll tell me **now** , Sampson_, syllables slicing through his ears like razors because the world was too much and it had to stop, he hated it for not stopping. “Jacob,” Rook’s blurred eyes aching-bleeding red and spilling over down his face, hands grasping at Jacob’s legs, his shirt, trying to pull himself up when he was anchored down and begging for something he’d forgotten, that he couldn’t think of. Words pouring out of him because it was coming _back_ , it hadn’t left because it lived inside him already and always,

“I’m knocking him out,”

Jacob’s sandpapered growl as he pinned Rook’s arm with a knee and lifted his freed hand up, curled it into a fist before Sampson grabbed it, straining his whole bodyweight to hold him back. Jacob shook him free, batted him off and sent him sprawling. “He’s _screaming_.”

“The Bitten can react this way to bliss but head trauma could leave him in a coma, please Herald I am _begging_ you  – ”

And he paused when he was going to give Rook what he wanted and the sky was cracking open, spiderwebbing like something fragile in John’s hand and it was looking back at him, at how alone he was and _Jacob_ , not _moving_ \- Rook snarled and bucked, got his foot under him and he was clawing at Jacob when the shift in balance made him pull back, let off Rook’s hand enough for Rook to get it free. Trying to gouge out his eyes while Jacob leaned back to keep them just out of reach, got nails dragged down his neck instead and _hate_. Rook howling hate, for homicide because he _hated_ and it hurt so badly, it hurt like nothing else and he was begging for it to stop, he was begging to die and screaming for blood and,

“Help me,” he begged and he met Jacob’s eyes just once, river-heavy and wide with something, but instead he got,

“confess, Rook,” Joseph, bracing his head between his hands and looking down at him, or maybe John, features blurring into each other and Rook straining to hear him and the words coming out again, so Rook was pouring out onto the riverbank in a flood of years, of silence and sitting and listening and he heard,

pride,

and he heard,

 _wrath_ ,

and his chest split open.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook woke up in his own bed with _WRATH_ on his chest, spelled out in neat lines of black ink. _PRIDE_ carved into his hip above the healing claw marks, hot-hurting and smelling of antiseptic and it turned out Rook’s door did lock when he tried the knob, stiff and sore and the line of his spine hurting all the way up to a brain that felt raw. It locked fine,

_from the outside,_

and there was a second in which he just didn’t understand, mind half-scattered on the riverbank. Hand on an unmoving doorknob in a white door in a white frame against a white wall, Rook waiting for some sign that he had misunderstood. A puzzle piece to arrive with what – a doctor, a jailer, another knife? Maybe _ENVY_ next time, so he could watch the three of them and know his sin and Rook let go of the doorknob because it seemed to disappear for a moment, white frame and door sliding into the white wall made featureless. Impassable, a door there in name only, the vast expanse of the wall in front of Rook’s waking-wavering vision. He braced himself against it, smoothed his hand across the cold surface and then he stepped back, _wrath_ carved into his chest and deeper down, right through cartilage and the shape of his bones.

 _Help me_ , Rook thought, the echo rang in him. The fury shifting and sliding to his skin the longer he stood still and he heard himself say _please_ who knew how long ago, so he kicked the door down because wrath, _wrath_ he could fucking _do_.

It flew open with a bang, splintering of wood. There was a peggie outside to add insult to injury, one of the dead-eyed ones Jacob turned out from his hospital, so Rook wasn’t surprised when he took one look at Rook (at _wrath_ ) and lunged. Rook didn’t risk another kick but his punch sent the man crashing into the opposite wall so hard he rebounded, he bounced off and back into a second blow that left him bleeding on the floor face-down, made the sound of sprint-fast steps from the first floor below. Rook reached down stiffly and slide the knife out of the peggie’s hand – a knife, waiting while he _slept_ and Joseph, waiting at the other end of the couch every night and a blade all his own.

 _Please_ , he thought, and _help me_ , he remembered and his lip twisted at his own stupidity, that was the thought in his head when Jacob got to the top of the stairs. Looked at him, the knife so natural in his grip and the peggie splayed out on the floor, and shifted just slightly. Centre of gravity gone low in preparation of a rush, all that strength braced for him and Rook, standing still.

“You knew you’d have to kill me, before,” Rook said, voice shaking with something like rage and something far worse ( _help me_ ). “Nothing’s changed.”

“You going to use that?” Jacob asked with a nod at the knife instead of reacting, him _responding_ to the issue at hand and Rook had gone to kick him down the stairs before he took another breath. Jacob blocked – feet planted, always fucking _ready_ – and forced him back, a jab to _pride_ (flesh-deep) on Rook’s hip that just made him snarl, made him hit back hard enough that Jacob’s next block didn’t just absorb the force, cost him something and he was slower to catch the knife when Rook slashed it out towards him. Jacob didn’t flinch even when he couldn’t stop it before it was inches into his shoulder, moved the opposite way to every peggie Rook had ever stabbed because he shoved _forward_ , further into it just to get Rook off-balance, to try and take him to the floor where Rook’s height and reach wouldn’t help him. Rook braced on the floor and kicked out, got Jacob’s knee and had the wind driven out of him when Jacob just folded into it, came down all elbows and muscle driving down to pin him down.

The knife clattered down the hallway when Jacob tore it out, got to it a split second before Rook could twist it in further and so Rook settled for a headbutt instead, one that landed squarely to his face with a _crunch_ , hauled himself up and over onto Jacob (the riverbank, backwards) with,

“You _left_ me!” out there, out in the world where he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t take it (any of it) back, “you left me there to _die!”_ In the bliss, on the bank, in every bed he’d ever slept in and he lifted Jacob by the shirtfront enough to slam him back into the ground, to make him fucking flinch. Jacob’s hand around his neck already and squeezing hard, Rook just pressing down harder. And then he’d been rolled, Jacob shoving him over his own peggie’s body to get the advantage and grabbing him from behind. Jacob’s arms were around him before he could react, up from below his armpits and one pulling up, the other crossing to immobilise his neck, the weight of him settling behind Rook and then a leg thrown up to brace his hips down. Catching him in time for him to thrash out of it, to try and grab at Jacob’s face over his shoulder, to do _anything_ and getting nowhere,

“You’re alright,” suddenly there between them, Jacob’s harsh tone in his ear. “You’re alright, Rook, you’re done,” and Rook choking on a breath too much like a sob, too much like something coming unstuck in him, pressure-gauge gone and pipes bursting. “It’s over.”

Rook couldn’t breathe (help me _help me_ ) and Jacob was holding so tight that he could blame him for it, hold like a vice because that’s what it was, a hold just a mockery of a hug, to keep him secured. Safety on when Boomer was nowhere in sight, safety on and Rook starting to relax against his will when railing wasn’t getting anywhere and he was still tired, felt like he’d been tired forever and having the choice to move taken away was something close to freedom.

“Will you fucking breathe already,” Jacob bit out over his shoulder, arm an iron bar across Rook’s chest, across _wrath_ and the smell of his blood where Rook had stabbed him. Rook’s shirt starting to stick to his back where the blood was still leaking out of him, pressed between the two of them.

Rook did breathe, drawing in a painful gasp through his bruised throat that tasted like salt-water, shook like a sob. “I hope I broke your fucking nose,” he ground-glass got out when he had the air for it, ignored how his arm was freed just a little when Jacob moved, lifted his hand to the blood smeared across his face, brushing Rook’s cheek on the way to the motion for how close they were.

“You did, you spiteful brat,” Jacob grunted, a note of grudging something in his voice, or maybe just a grudge.

“Nothing’s changed,” Rook repeated, straining against his grip again before the energy drained out, another shudder ran through him. “ _Nothing_.”

“Fight it all you want,” Jacob replied, re-settling his arm to keep Rook pinned. “Run, if you can.” Voice dropped, gravelly in Rook’s ear. “I’ll just hunt you down, deputy. I never make the same mistake twice.”

Letting him live, or leaving him, Rook wanted to ask in a voice like a keen, but Jacob kicked his free knee up to be more comfortable, bracketing Rook between his legs and taunting him with how he still had Rook trapped, back braced against his chest on the floor and helpless with it.

“Settle in, brat. I’m not letting go until you calm the hell down.” And in the face of Jacob’s renewed sly mockery, Rook struggled and struggled again, each effort draining a little more of the energy and anchoring him a little harder to his skin, weighing him down without the adrenaline. “Comfy?” Jacob asked, a little breathless from the resistance a while later and snide about it like he couldn’t help himself, like it was so fucking typical for Rook to be unreasonable, to break his nose and smash his men down.

To bloody Jacob, to fight him again and again and fight him better each time.

“Oh, it’s a fucking dream,” Rook growled, voice thick, and kicked out at the peggie’s body just out of spite. Only Jacob was solid with muscle and warmth and he chuckled meanly at the display from behind him, vibrations through Rook’s back and out through his chest so yeah, it kind of was comfortable with the fight leeching out of him into Jacob, who could take it and have room to spare, just one surge of bitterness twitching him through him, erupting out in, “I asked you to _help_ me,” Rook just spat out. Hurled the words away like they could take the memory with it, of looking at the Seeds and wanting something from them when he knew better.

“You asked me to kill you, too,” Jacob rumbled. “But I’ve fucking got you now, Rook, don’t I?”

And he did, so when Joseph came up the stairs (vest on, noon mass) he found them still sitting there, Rook braced and held fast, safety on whether he liked it or not, and the peggie groaning in pain beneath the dent Rook had made in the wall with his back.

 

“What happened?” he asked, an edge in him, and Rook just glared because he’d talked enough.

“Nothing,” Jacob answered for him instead, the blood long since dried between them and Rook, collapsed in the awkward hold and hurting, listening again and breathing on his own. Joseph’s eyes flicked between them, to the blood sprayed on the opposite wall and the ruin of Rook’s door, the man bloodied on the floor beside them. “Relax, Joe. Stress isn’t good for you,” Jacob added, and it was surreal enough to hear Jacob be mean (be _mocking_ ) to someone else that Rook actually snorted.

 

 

 _A fucking dream,_ Rook would remember later, sitting in the kitchen watching Joseph sew Jacob’s shoulder whole again, and he’d kick himself for it.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rook you cannot just fight someone every time you experience an emotion or get drugged against your will and then forced into telling your deepest emotional secrets. And then tattooed. Well, alright. This once. 
> 
> Or,  
> Jacob the highly specific crisis manager: punch it in the face then pin it to the floor until the crisis gets worn out.  
> John: should never follow this advice.
> 
> Title from the incredibly accurate Hold Me Down by Emilie and Ogden.


	13. the unpeopled world

 

Rook walked out of the house that afternoon and didn’t go back inside for five days.

This was allowed, it seemed. Probably because Joseph’s peggies would know if he left the island, but the woods around Joseph’s home were broad enough that he could feel alone again. So he took a small pack, a knife and a tarp and made himself a shelter in the woods, rolled out a stolen sleeping bag and let Boomer take watch the first night because his good boy really was getting lazy. Curled tight on top of a second tarp, tucked in at the edges around the wound in his chest that no knife had put there, that felt festering even fresh as it was. Raided a peggie’s camp for a fishing rod the next morning and gave that a shot too, even though he didn’t eat fish and after an hour of watching them fail to give a shit about his lure, he didn’t see the appeal.

But Peaches sat by him and watched the whole process with interest, especially when Boomer saw fish get close to the bank and splashed in after them, so Rook sat there and brooded (and ached) with the fishing rod in hand. Tattoo itching under the clear plastic wrap over it because apparently John hadn’t wanted it to fade.

He re-cast his line with prejudice and a face like a thundercloud. _Asshole_.

Boomer scared off another group of fish, rolling around in the shallows, so Rook angled the rod in the opposite direction to start winding in the lure when the sound of a radio almost gave him a heart attack. A little scratched white one, hanging off the tackle box he’d stolen, waterproof and dangling from a Cheeseburger boat float.

“ _Rook_.”

Rook groaned. “Did I summon him?” he asked the sky, asked Peaches, who just kneaded his calf with her paw and chewed idly on his pants. “Be honest with me, Peaches. He can feel it whenever I think about him, can’t he?”

Peaches sneezed on his leg. Rook nudged her with his foot but felt himself smile despite himself when she just rubbed her cheek along his boot.

_“Rook, can you hear me?”_

“Nope,” Rook responded without even touching the radio, popping the end of the word and collecting his line up again. What was he doing wrong, was it the lure? It seemed lure-ish to him, all glittery and jointed. Maybe one of the ones with feathers? He could have thrown them a little fish Mardi Gras with all the feathers and shine in the tackle box, so he dug through for another one to try and settled on one that looked like a terrified bait-fish just because he liked the eyes.

“ _Rook, if I have to walk into those godforsaken backwoods to talk to you, you won’t like the conversation we have,”_ John said darkly, and while the idea of him crashing through the underbrush was funny, Rook wanted him further away.

“What do you want, John?” he asked wearily, once he’d braced the fishing pole between his knees so he could lean forward and grab the radio. “I haven’t left _custody_. No rules about camping.”

 _“You didn’t come back last night. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t broken your neck trying to save a kitten from a tree. Skydived without a parachute. I could go on._ ”

Rook sighed. “I’m putting the radio down, John.”

 _“Stop_.”

Rook kept the radio in his hand, mouthing _stop_ in mocking imitation at Peaches, who was dozing off in the sun and didn’t appreciate it properly.

A few bursts of static, like John was taking his thumb on and off the button. “ _The bliss hurt you_ ,” he said in the end. _“Are you.”_ Another long pause while Rook fiddled with the keychain and stared out over the river, waiting until John finally finished his sentence, a noise of frustration to preface it. _“Are you alright?”_

Rook paused, fingers wrapped around Cheeseburger’s tiny plastic face. “What did you just ask me?” he asked, lifting the radio back up. “If I’m _alright_?”

“ _I don’t like to repeat myself, Rook,”_ came back immediately.

Rook watched a fish jump out of the water in the distance, fins glinting in the sun like it was rubbing his failure in his face. “Well, John,” he said after an age, after an incredulous silence that just stretched on and on. “How the fuck do you think I am?”

“ _Just answer the question_ ,” John said tersely.

Rook opened his mouth and then closed it, tossed the radio up and down in his hand a few times and thought about trying to hit that distant jumping fish with it. Whether he’d have better luck doing that than fishing. In the end, he just answered honestly. “I’ve been better.”

 _“When are you coming back?”_ More comfortable with demanding than worrying, John, true to form.

“I’ll come back when I don’t want to break every one of your fingers, or your pretty fucking face,” Rook decided, though he hadn’t planned that far ahead. “Don’t come after me. I won’t go far. We had a deal, after all.”

A frog started up, high trilling that startled Boomer back into the water while John absorbed this, came back in a way that shouldn’t have surprised Rook but did.

“… _You think I have a pretty face, do you?”_ John asked slyly, and Rook lunged to his feet and hurled the radio out over the water in a flash of panic. It skipped once, then sank as far as the float allowed where the fish had been.

He felt a little self-conscious while it bobbed there, boat float a dot of pink-yellow in the water and the damn thing was waterproof, so what had he been trying to accomplish? Standing there embarrassed and Boomer immediately paddling out after it, a gun dog (National champ), while Peaches rolled onto her back and looked miffed at Rook moving away from where she could lean on him. “… You didn’t hear a fucking thing,” he told her seriously. “You got that?”

Peaches looked unimpressed.

He couldn’t really blame her.

 

 

-

 

 

The next day proved what he had already known – Rook was terrible at fishing, but was a good enough hunter to make up for it. A day without a nibble passed again, the zen of doing something that asked for nothing from him enough to keep him by the river until he actually needed food, and enough of it to be found in the woods to keep him happy through it. In the end he caught a rabbit in a snare he’d stolen on his way between camps, prepared it over the fire that night and tore pieces of it off for Boomer when he was done, letting him lick his singed fingers clean while Peaches prowled through the woods for her own dinner. The tiny radio crackled sometimes, none of the coded messages he was used to from the resistance but then – Rook for the county, so what would they have been fighting?

Rook found himself smiling at nothing in particular. Skin still itchy but body less sore from struggling, from fighting Jacob afterwards, and nothing trying to fight him since. It was enough for that, to be surprised by smiling at random times, and he went to bed late after chatting easily to Boomer about the few constellations he could identify above while the fire burnt out and then making up the rest because Boomer wouldn’t judge him for it, for naming something ancient and precious the Rabid Wolverine Cluster then lying about it for twenty minutes. Tucked in with Peaches between him and the narrow shelter’s exit because she liked that best when they were outside, liked to keep an ear out for prey to stalk while he slept, but to have the freedom to rest her head on his chest if she was feeling lazy.

He slept deeply, enough that when he heard something past midnight, struggling out of it felt like he was dragging himself out of a fast-moving river – like his hands were bound and the island far away, waiting for him to drown. He patted the ground near his head, dislodging Peaches and groping for the radio in the dark, repeating his name over.

“’lo,” he greeted, sleep-blurred. “What?”

He had time for his eyes to drift closed again before they spoke. “ _Did I wake you?_ ” John asked, irritatingly alert.

“What time’s’it?” he asked, squinting at the radio, the painfully bright tiny blinking light on it, blinding in the dark.

“ _Three-thirty.”_

Rook groaned. “Why are you talking to me?” he complained, rubbing his face. “What do you want, I’m going.”

“ _Wait_.”

“Good _night_ John,”

 _“It wasn’t meant to hurt you,”_ John said quickly.

Rook frowned, finger paused on the power button and mind suddenly further out of that night-dark river, starting to get its bearings.

 _“I didn’t know the bliss would affect you that way,”_ John told him, quiet. Reluctant. Then annoyed, “ _you’re not Bitten, it_ shouldn’t _have hurt you.”_

Rook’s free hand drifted from his face to his neck, to the neat punctures scarred over there below his ear. “… I’m Bitten,” he said. “You saw.”

John bit back a noise, an argument in a cut-off syllable the way only he could manage. “ _You’re not one of them anymore, you’re not unclaimed like they are. You’re nothing like that._ ”

Rook was going to do it. Wide awake in the dark, he’d decided. He was going to kill him. Maybe Joseph too if he could get it done fast enough before Jacob caught him. “I am one of them,” he said, clear and slow and loud. “And you torture confessions out of people. It was always going to _hurt_.”

“ _Not like that. Not that way,_ ” John said, something in his tone getting lost over the airwaves, just not translating – something like frustration that wasn’t. “ _It’s supposed to be a_ choice.”

Rook stared up at the tarp in the dark above him, stretched out for shelter, and he felt Peaches try to slide back onto his chest with her whiskers poking at him through his shirt. “…Why are you telling me this?” he whispered, so quietly he wasn’t sure John would hear him. Whispered it to the shelter, to Peaches, to made-up constellations more than to John, who somehow heard it anyway.

“ _You were supposed to choose me_ ,” John replied. _“Us_ ,” he amended, but not what he’d said first, not even a little. “ _You are wanted, you have been_ found _. You should have been able to choose us, and the bliss_ took _you_ ,” and it had, maybe it hadn’t given him back either because John said that something like frustrated that wasn’t, calling him at three-thirty in the fucking morning while Rook waited for the sins carved into him to heal, out in the forest in the dark.

His voice was thick when he spoke again, and he didn’t know why. “I’m going, John,” and then he turned the radio off. It should have taken him a long time to fall asleep, _supposed to_ and _should_ and _wanted_ running through him, but it didn’t. He was awake one moment, and then he wasn’t.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook met his first red peggie the next morning, on his way to a yet another day of fishing without fish, to washing his clothes in the river. He ran into the peggie when he literally ran into her, half-tripping over a woman prone beside a fallen long with a gun in her hand and tears running down her face. He took a quick step back and raised his knife defensively, but she just looked at him and hell. Her neck was as bare as the day she’d been born, not a Bite in sight but with the veins raised red beneath it in patches. Whites of blue eyes blown red with capillaries rising to the surface, spiderwebs of broken across the span of her. But too much of her still there to be an Angel, the wrong kind of scars (wrong kind of broken).

She didn’t move and neither did he, wind rustling the leaves around them into kaleidoscopes of green and there was something in her face that made him twitch. Made him want to put a bullet in her anyway, and him without a gun in hand.

“I can’t feel him,” she told Rook, “he’s not there.”

“…Who?” he asked warily, looking between the gun and her face. Her hand was loose on it, but the fingernails were bitten down to bleeding, caked with dried blood.

“He’s not there,” she said again, fresh tears starting to roll down her face, nose blotched red. “He left me.” Her hand spasmed over the gun, a semi-automatic that could have punched holes in him like paper at that distance. “Why did he leave?”

Rook took a slow step closer, hand raised. “I’m sure we can find him,” he said carefully because Rook couldn’t help it, he knew better but he couldn’t ever help it, just couldn’t leave wounded well enough alone. “Just put the gun down, and we’ll go together.”

She looked down at the gun like she’d never seen it before. Then at him, and with a rush of cold Rook realised she was looking at where he was holding one hand behind his back, the one with the knife. “You don’t want to help me,” she said, voice rising, rage twisting her features and gun suddenly gripped right. “You’re one of them!” and then Rook was moving, going down hard with the knife when one shot rang off, two, _rat-tat_ bursting over his shoulder to leave a tinny ringing in his ears while his knife sunk in through her ribs, neat to the heart while his own was pounding. All the air went out of her at once, the gun pressed hard back to her so she couldn’t point it at him and blood seeping out of her around the blade, leg kicking out in spasm.

Her eyes gone beseeching again, despairing, trying to make words and choking on it between breaths while Rook crouched over her, hand vice-tight around the knife handle. “Why did he go away?” she asked, she gurgled through the blood bubbling out of her mouth, pleading again, that fury seeping out of her with the smell of copper. “I saw him, but he wasn’t there.”

Rook just looked at her helplessly. “I don’t know,” he said, “I’m sorry,” and she died a few seconds later, that felt like minutes.

Rook stayed crouching there until the blood slowed to nothing around the knife, barely trickled when he pulled it out of her. Waiting for his heart rate to normalise, to stop pounding in his ears, replaced by something else, looking at her frozen-open eyes. He was used to peggies travelling in groups, at least in pairs, but he cleared the area swiftly and found no one. Her tracks ran in circles, wandering and stumbling over themselves until she’d just… given up and sat down, curled up with a gun by a log and cried, lost her mind.

He ended up by the river anyway, his new gun by his boots and stripping his clothes off to scrub them in the water, trails of red-pink drifting away from him where it had sprayed onto him, pooled around his knees. The water was cold enough to make his teeth chatter, even sparkling as it was in direct sunlight, and Rook kept at it until what stains were left had faded to brown, rust instead of red, and then he laid them out to try and tried to get the blood out from under his nails too.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook didn’t want to keep thinking about it.

He didn’t. He’d unwrapped some trail mix that he’d strolled right up to a peggie and punched them in the face for, and he’d been grazing on that while he sat and shivered in slightly damp clothes by the fire, and he didn’t want to think about it. The phrase caught just wrong in his head, and there was no one to talk to, no one to pass the words to so that he wasn’t carrying them by himself. Blue eyes shot red and that pathetic whine, the gurgle they all let out when they were dying and it wasn’t that that haunted him anymore, for all that said about him.

His picked up the radio and set it down twice before he could convince himself to do it. Walked away each time, went to make sure Peaches hadn’t wandered off too far and Boomer wasn’t trying to sneak back to the river, came back and thought about it some more while he tried to tell himself he wasn’t. Said out loud that he wasn’t going to talk to anyone while he got ready for bed far too late in the night, when his eyes were hot and scratchy and he couldn’t put it off anymore, stripped down to underwear and let the rest of his clothes dry more fully on a branch overnight, wrapped in a sleeping bag and those foil blankets for shock that crinkled when he moved.

He didn’t, but in the end he did, so,

“what’s that poem,” he asked the radio that night, hours later, the fire died down to embers beside him. Boomer curled up behind his legs. “The one with the man who wasn’t there.”

It took a moment and John sounded tired when he answered, voice husky and too intimate when it was Rook hearing it in the dark, like he was there with him. Rustling in the background and him, sleepy and a little snappish, not someone who liked to be woken up but he always answered, didn’t he, that’s why he’d asked so Rook heard,

“ _Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man, who wasn’t there_ ,”

and John had a good voice for reciting, steady cadence even half-asleep and irritable and he knew the poem Rook had wanted at two a.m., had picked up to tell it to him and another kind of intimate that Rook didn’t want either. “ _He wasn’t there again today, I wish, I wish, he’d go away_.”

“Yeah,” Rook replied. “That one. What’s it about?”

John sighed. “ _A ghost. Written for a play at Harvard.”_

Rook nodded to himself, licked his lips before trying something that felt tentative and wasn’t words until he spoke. “Why do you know that off the top of your head? Random trivia about poems.”

_“I went to Harvard, Rook.”_

“Oh,” Rook said, not bothering to say it into the mic and feeling stupid for asking.

“ _It’s a song, too_. _Do you want the rest or not?”_

“No,” Rook said, the tops of his ears still red because what was he _doing_ , asking John Seed to tell him poems at two in the morning, what was he _doing_ asking him for anything. “I’m going.”

 _“Good_ night _, Rook.”_

Rook turned the volume down and tucked it under a corner of the tarp. Lay awake in the dark for a long time, with the crickets and Boomer’s legs twitching against him in his sleep, and he thought about knives and voices in the dark, but he didn’t dream about anything, except,

_I saw him, but he wasn’t there_

and poems about ghosts.

 

 

-

 

 

In the light of day, Rook could have kicked himself. He had done exactly what he’d said he wouldn’t. He’d given an inch, and the next morning he was pulling on clothes that had dried stiff when it started again, he’d lost the mile before he knew it.

“ _Five letter word for ‘young fowl’._ ”

Rook paused, halfway through tying his boots up and looking over his shoulder at the radio, sparking to life at random, spitting out John Seed apparently having a stroke.

“ _Stuck out in rural Montana and I can’t escape farm animals even in the New York Times_ ,” John added in a mutter.

Rook looked around, briefly uncertain John was speaking to him. But unless he had a favourite peggie on the line, it had to be for him – he did this, he reminded himself. A poem he could only half-remember from the night before, too early then and too early now.

He reached out and snagged it, pulled it off the branch. “It’s me, here, that you want word puzzle help from,” Rook said curiously. “You remember me. The one you tortured and carved things into a few days ago.”

“ _And now I’m asking you a question. Five letters. Young fowl._ ”

Rook opened his mouth, nothing coming out for a moment, incredulity freezing his throat. “… Poult,” he settled on, sounding a little strangled.

John hummed, then said, “ _fits_ ,” and didn’t add anything else.

Rook waited for a while, then grabbed his pack and set off. Clipped the radio to his belt loop, but couldn’t have said why.

 

 

Rook was filling his container with water, easing it through the filter when, “ _six letters, young cow_ ,” came through, and he’d lifted to reply “heifer, H-E-I-F-E-R,” before he’d really registered the question, trained too well by Joey at her desk on Mondays, doing the Times crossword a day late so she could check the answers. John made an irritated noise, apparently fitting the word in fine, and Rook cursed under his breath when the water overflowed in his careless hands, unfiltered water splashing into the rest.

 

 

“ _Camels, horses, hippopotami_ ,” John came out with at one stage, and Rook had grinned just at the sound of John Seed saying _hippopotami_ with his sharp, sly voice, a word no one could make serious. “Ungulates,” he replied when he could be sure the laugh was gone from his voice, when he knew the curve of his mouth wouldn’t shape the word into something warm.

“ _I didn’t say how many letters_ ,” John pointed out peevishly.

“Am I wrong?” Rook asked, knowing that he wasn’t when John didn’t answer.

 

 

“Do you think I’m a farm boy?” Rook puzzled out eventually when yet another random clue came in, this time _to work with a hoe_ delivered with utter sincerity while Rook started a fire for the night, almost choked on air to hear it.

 _“… Are you not?”_ John asked warily. Almost hostile, uncertain of Rook’s life and defensive like he shouldn’t be, had ownership of some part of it that should have rendered him beyond questioning.

Rook shook his head because farm-poor was very different from dirt-poor, but anyone who wasn’t either wouldn’t understand. _Dirt is dirt_ was dirt, was what they meant, puzzled and oblivious to what they were really saying. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

He thought for a second that he’d offended John, was a little relieved at the idea that the unsettling time together (words and letters thrown, hours apart) was at an end when John genuinely surprised him with, _“First wife of Picasso, then. Four letters. Amaze me,”_ and Rook laughed, short and sharp and startled, almost enough to let John hear it.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook had a steep learning curve even when he woke late the next morning, feeling sober down further than the liver (right down to the blood), and the next day the tiny-fish lure made him a lucky man. The line jerked a few times before he really realised what was happening, assumed he’d caught it on a rock again until it started rapidly pulling line free, the force dragging him forward a step. He yelped and pulled it in the other direction, reeling in when he had some slack and Boomer barking hysterically around him, excited by the high whirring of the line and the thrashing getting closer until he pulled the fish free with a spray of water and a yell, exhilaration making him flail more than grab for it while the fish dangled on the line. He caught it and panicked, not sure what to do. After a second he held it down against a nearby rock, fished his knife out and cut its head off, which seemed to do the trick but did get blood everywhere and left him with a fish’s head on the ground, staring at him with dead, baleful round eyes. Rook held its body, some scales coming off under his tight grip, and slowly relaxed.

He’d caught one.

He’d caught a fucking fish.

“King of the river!” he shouted, throwing his other arm up in in the air. He whooped, pointing at the fish triumphantly but quickly lifting it out of Peaches’ reach when this drew her attention. He held it up and looked around, something prompting him to look for someone to tell, someone other than the greedy cougar leaning into his hip. Faltered when he realised no one was there except the two of them and Boomer, letting out the excited yelping of someone just happy to be included,

_choose us_

and the radio was in his hand already, weeks of practice and a short-wave lifeline to others dictating his actions for him, the smile in his voice broad and bending syllables into something different, voice a different colour when he asked impulsively, “Hey John. That poem, what’s the rest of it?”

Reliable as the sunrise, he had never had to wait more than a minute before. But two, then three crept by, and he started feeling uncertain, felt the smile leak from his face. That sly creeping feeling that came up behind the ribs, curled through the stomach (not- _for_ -you) that made him feel awkward, wrong-footed – expecting a step where there wasn’t one and him, losing balance with the lights off.

“Nevermind,” he’d started to say when someone answered.

“ _Rook_ ,” Joseph Seed answered. “ _It’s been too long_.”

Rook faltered. Lowered his hand quickly, injured side feeling too exposed with that voice made real again (confess, Rook) when he hadn’t been ready, hadn’t braced himself.

“ _My brother has returned to the valley, for a short while_ ,” Joseph said. “ _The faithful there have grown anxious and were in need of him.”_

“My mistake,” Rook said shortly, trying to end it without footholds. “Sorry.”

 _“Rook,”_ Joseph said and Rook always forgot so quickly the gravity in him. That voice pitched to carry, black hole waiting and enough to make even a body like Rook pause in orbit. _“Are you coming home?”_

Rook’s breath hitched in his throat. Joseph’s home, he knew. Where he and Jacob had bloodied the floor, the hallway, where they’d held him down and cut him open while he screamed to die. Where ( _there_ _was a boy called Eustace Clarence Shrubb, and he almost deserved it_ because) someone had left _Dawn Treader_ outside his door in a pile of hard covers and the bed was big enough to fit him,

Joseph’s home and not _Rook’s_ ,

but nothing antiseptic about it.

 _“… What was the poem?”_ Joseph asked quietly, when he didn’t respond. _“That John shared with you.”_

“I’ll be back this afternoon,” Rook said instead, tossing Peaches the fish she so clearly wanted and words gone worn-white again, uncurved by his mouth. “The weather’s turning bad anyway.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But now who will help John with crosswords? He basically just tries to force Rook to interact with him with anything that's on hand and lucked out with that one. Damn you, Hudson. You trained Rook too well. 
> 
> For those who have not read Voyage of the Dawn Treader, "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Shrubb, and he almost deserved it" is the greatest opening line ever and that is where it is from. Also, the chapter title. 
> 
> I recommend the entire Ecartele OST, which is a beautiful score made for a film never made. It's beautiful and should be heard by everyone.


	14. when my skin is gone

 

Joseph was on the porch when Rook emerged from the woods around sunset, Boomer trotting out in front of him and beelining for the door while Peaches skulked behind. Drinking from a bottle of water and leaning against one of the posts holding it up, Rook averting his eyes because Joseph had left his shirt somewhere, was just in jeans and boots and the many tattoos on his skin, the long stretch of his throat when he took another sip.

Joseph Seed, putting his water down and coming down the steps towards him. Joseph Seed, allergic to shirts with pants that rode low, fuck his fucking _life_.

Rook bent a little when he got close, because Joseph was nothing if not consistent and he knew how this greeting went. He didn’t anticipate that Joseph would meet him a few long strides from the porch and just haul him to his chest, wrap his arms around his shoulders and keep him there to feel him breathing. A long hug that felt familiar even though it _wasn’t_ , even though it had no right to remind Rook that Joseph always smelt clean, like the forest and something that wasn’t, to make him hover his hands awkwardly because there was no part of Joseph that was safe and even less without a shirt to keep them that layer apart. Joseph’s hands slid from his back to his neck, tilting his head down to press their foreheads in what Rook had expected from the beginning. A brief clasp, less overstimulating and safer, now that Rook knew to just let his hands hang by his side until Joseph let go.

Until Joseph let go, he thought again, when it lasted a hair too long.

Until Joseph let go, but

he didn’t. He stayed, hand on the back of Rook’s neck all long fingers and careful grip and he just breathed with him, their foreheads pressing together, Rook bent down to meet him there. Rook swallowed, opening his eyes and just seeing Joseph’s closed peacefully below the yellow tints before he pulled back, cupping Rook’s face between his palms for a moment.

“Welcome home,” Joseph said as he let him go at last, and Rook just sighed.

“Sure,” he agreed, and hefted his pack higher on his shoulder to walk inside. Ignored how Joseph’s relaxed arms meant Boomer was sniffing at his wrists curiously, how Joseph greeted the two loves of Rook’s life with open hands before he followed him.

Jacob was at the kitchen table when he got there, legs stretched out in front of him and slouching into the chair, tapping something onto the surface. “You took your time,” he said and tossed him that something, that turned out to be a phone when Rook caught it half-expecting a grenade. The lock screen was the eight-point Eden’s Gate brand, black on white, and there was no passcode. He thumbed through it, noting just three contacts. Joseph, Jacob, John. No carrier name at the top, but three bars of signal from apparently nowhere. He looked up at Jacob questioningly.

“Don’t turn the GPS off,” Jacob told him. “You wander off into the woods without it and I’ll come find you. You don’t want that.”

Rook raised his eyebrows, but Jacob had leant back into his slouch, hands folded across his stomach. The bridge of his nose was still bruise-dark but not swollen, the skin under his eyes purple and yellow and healing too fast when Rook wanted to see it there, when he wanted violence on the outside of Jacob too. “You want me to have a phone?” Rook asked.

“No,” Jacob scoffed. “But that signal carries only as far as the county, and not even all of that. No internet. Even you can’t do much with it.”

Yeah. That seemed about right.

“How does it have service at all?”

Jacob smirked. The look Rook had come to recognise, curved mouth and flat blue eyes, river gone to rock. Jacob knowing something he didn’t, the look of strategic advantage. Rook just looked back at the phone, then lifted it and snapped a photo of him. That expression, the one face of Jacob’s that Rook really understood.

Jacob’s smirk vanished. Rook made a show of checking it out and Jacob photographed well, was the thing. Even, handsome features set in as direct a shot as he could in sudden impulse, scars stretching over otherwise clear skin. “Good camera,” he remarked idly, then tucked it in his pocket and trying so hard (so medium-low) not to give him the look, The Look, the one Staci called the _giant bastard_ face and Earl just called him a shit for putting on.

Not trying at all really, and Jacob bared his teeth at him, sharp and white and nothing like a smile.

Rook kept it up for a few seconds but he was getting tired already, worn thin like washed cotton and body hypersensitive to the air, where Joseph had touched him and Jacob’s eyes had landed. It was too much to have someone there in person, breathing and real and human after he’d spent days alone with just Boomer and Peaches, a voice on the radio for company. “I think I’ll go read,” he said and he beat a hasty retreat for the living room, where his stack of books still sat beside the couch. He couldn’t find it there and glanced around the rest of the room, heard the front door close and saw Joseph walk in out of his peripheral vision.

“What are you looking for?” Joseph asked when he walked over to him and that was a weird moment, to hear Joseph ask idly what Rook had heard him ask a congregation, to declare it like he knew the answer already.

“Have you seen my book?” he asked, kneeling down to see if he’d kicked it under the couch at some stage, if it had come off the stack and Joseph didn’t answer him, didn’t say anything and,

something was off.

The muscles down his back were tensing before he’d registered something wasn’t right, bracing him to roll, to lunge out of the way. Joseph wasn’t moving. He always carried his weight around his hips, low, could move his body effectively and gracefully with it, but he was paused a few feet in front of him. Rook looked up slowly, and Joseph didn’t seem to be breathing. His pupils were blown wide-dark, looking down at him and Rook stared for a moment where he was crouching in front of him–

Kneeling, he thought as the silence stretched out, Joseph a statue staring down at him. His knee on the ground made it _kneeling_ in front of Joseph (the _Father_ ). After a beat (heart loud in his ears) Rook slowly rose to his feet, barely breathing himself and unwilling to take his eyes off Joseph in case he moved, in case it broke the glass spun out in the silence and snapped whatever was holding Joseph there, erupting in violence or something that wasn’t.

Joseph gestured wordlessly to the bookcase without so much as looking at it, pages of religion and then Lewis on its side, a scrap of paper still marking where he’d left off. He watched him unblinkingly, pale eyes gone black and Rook couldn’t turn his back to him, snatched the book and made his way slowly out of the living room because everyone knew you didn’t move fast near a predator. Not by bears, cougars, or any of the Seeds.

He beat a hasty retreat to the shower after that, the one that almost fit but had enough hot water for three, and he scrubbed five days of river and dirt from his skin, noticed how _pride_ was almost fully scarred over.

 

 

After his shower Rook settled on the bed in a towel, picked up the phone to investigate. He remembered Eli talking about radio towers but hadn’t had time to investigate before he’d left, didn’t know enough about them on their own to work out what they’d done to jury-rig a network. Which was a kind of infuriating all of its own – cults weren’t supposed to be _good_ at technology, weren’t supposed to be _better_ at it than everyone else. Jacob the wrong kind of cult icon, too willing to use everything possible to dismantle resistance with military precision, a terrifying kind of aptitude. To put enemies inside friends, and Rook opened his phone to see who’d used it last. No previous calls, made or received. GPS enabled for _S-F_ in location settings, and Rook just stared at it until the ridiculousness of _Seed – Family_ really sunk in ( _Stupid Fuck_ , capitalised in his phone).

When Rook checked the messages, there were already four texts from John. Two were photos from a plane, somewhere over the valley – one was a photo John had clearly took himself, probably after a few tries unless he was the master of selfies, and either would have fit him. Close enough to see his shirt was unbuttoned almost to the bottom of his tattooed sternum, eyes blue and bright and clear and too much with one side of his mouth tilted up. Too challenging, too flirtatious for Rook to really look at directly but already assigned as John’s contact photo and saved in his gallery. Not something he could picture Jacob doing, so it must have gone through John first because it was _exactly_ something he could picture John doing. The phone was expensive and slick-shiny and what John would buy for someone. Buy for Rook, whose last phone had been one of the ancient flip models because he was saving for a house and liked snapping it shut when he ended a call.

The fourth was more recent. An hour before he’d gotten back and just,

 

 **John  
** _DO NOT let your dog chew this you disgrace_

 

which was something he just couldn’t deal with, John bitching about his dog an idea too domestic to contemplate. He hovered over the keyboard for a moment because the phone screen was large but still not to his scale, got out _you’re a disgrace_ on autopilot before he deleted it, locked it and put it down quickly because this wasn’t him texting a friend, this wasn’t him ribbing Mary May with middle-school comebacks before he went to bed.

He sighed and shucked the towel, went to the dresser where everything was his size and there were too many things with planes on them, like the light aircraft blueprinted on the one he pulled on to sleep in over plain sweats. He sat down on the bed and he knew it wasn’t going to work.

He knew.

But he dialled his mother’s number and held it to his ear.

After a few seconds the phone just beeped, loud and shrill before it cut off (call failed). Rook sighed and tapped it against his leg. Opened it up to see the photos John had sent again and if he looked carefully he could make out a figure on the mountain in the distance, the statue made small by space between. It must have been close to John’s ranch because he could make out an airstrip, the river past that, and when he swiped to look at the next one he just did it again and there was John, blue-blue- _blue_ and Rook turned the screen off quickly.

He opened the door when Peaches let out a growl behind it, both her and her pseudo-brother Boomer (who was a handsome dog but made an ugly fucking cougar) in in a rush of fur and scratches from claws on the hardwood. He got a petty sort of kick out of it and settled in to read his book, took out a second folded piece of paper from much earlier he must have left there and kept at it until the house settled around him, until he heard two sets of footsteps move past his door to their own rooms and the world went dark and silent outside. He kept reading about dragons and loneliness long past it, eyes getting sore and eventually unable to focus before he put it down to go to sleep.

He glanced at the phone when he put the book down and reached for it, too tired not to, and he’d typed out _i called you back but you were gone_ and then it was just another line deleted, ( _I saw him but he wasn’t there_ ) and Rook made himself put it down, silent mode and face-down on the nightstand.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook woke because Boomer was scratching at the door, letting out quiet whines. Not an inside dog, he remembered, so he reluctantly rolled out of blankets he’d trapped around his legs in the night, yanked himself free and landed in a couch, padding over on cold floorboards to the door. “It’s okay,” he mumbled, scratching Boomer’s ears. “’m up.” Rook reached for the doorhandle and almost had it smacked into him when the door opened into his hand, getting him in the shoulder instead. He leaned around, blinking the sleep out of his eyes and Jacob was _too close_ to his face all of a sudden, his hand wrapped around the doorknob on the other side, looking up with his eyebrows raised.

Jacob’s eyes flicked down. Rook had a moment of panic, the vulnerable parts of him one layer of worn fabric down, at least one layer too little when Jacob was fully dressed, which for Jacob meant at least a little armed, but there was a lot of Rook to look over and he’d gotten hold of himself by the time Jacob was smirking at him.

“You gonna take him out?” Jacob asked, already making fun of him but morning-soft, lights in the hallway still off in the blue pre-dawn.

Rook glanced down at Boomer, who’d squeezed his face between his leg and the doorframe to leave his head sticking out into the hallway. Looking up at them with interest, this deviation to his apparent routine. Back at Jacob, still too close to his face, red hair and dim light and scars up close, enough to smell soap and faint gunpowder.

“It’s too early for you,” Rook muttered. He let Boomer slide out and he closed the door on Jacob, red in the blue-dawn and laughing on his way down the hall while Rook went back to bed with Peaches.

 

 

It was well into morning when Boomer crashed back onto the bed, wiggling up to Rook’s face and trying to take some of the pillow while Rook groaned and pushed him away, grimaced to feel Boomer immediately lick between his fingers. He smelled damp and the sun was shining outside, his legs were shaking just a little like they did after a hard run and the first concrete thought Rook had for the day was that,

Jacob Seed had been walking his _dog_ ,

and that woke him right up.

“You’re a damn hussy, Boomer,” Rook told him, and Boomer didn’t even have the decency to look properly ashamed when he clambered over him to say hi to Peaches.

 

 

Joseph dragged him to mass that day, just steered him right into the car and stood in front of the peggies while Jacob folded his arms to the side. Preached about _plans_ and _God_ and _family_ and drew them all in with that _pull_ he could turn on and off like magnets under his skin and in his voice, Rook sitting in the back while the voices washed over him and remembering shrill beeping cutting off into nothing, messages left on answering machines. Waited for it to be over and refused to look at Joseph while peggies cast glances at him – The _Sinner_ – like a wolf among sheep when every single sheep carried a rifle at bare minimum, the idea almost enough to make him laugh. Joseph touched his shoulder and introduced him to people too scared to meet his eyes afterwards, reaching out to them but always coming back to Rook like a lodestone, like Rook was the magnetic one and Rook holed himself back up again afterwards, too many faces and too many names clustered inside his head.

Fucking _Nancy_ , who had known everyone and wanted Rook to know them too, who was probably back in town cleaning up loose ends (Rook’s whole fucking life) and then Joseph, too, with his hands inside people’s heads and resting on Rook’s shoulders, his waist, his arms.

 _I haven’t forgiven you_ , Rook thought when he saw him for dinner that night, and Joseph looked back like he could read it there, could see _yet_ where there shouldn’t have been one.

 

 

-

 

 

The next day, Rook was ready. Set his alarm for Too Early a.m. in the fucking morning, was tying up his boots in the dark when Boomer rolled out of bed and slunk to the door like he was off to meet his mistress, looked guilty when Rook waited for the door to open with him.

Jacob didn’t look surprised when Rook stepped out first, zipping his jacket up and brushing past him, Boomer on his heels. “Not too early for you?” Jacob asked and wasn’t that so fucking fascinating, how concern faked poorly enough could just be sarcasm.

Rook made a noise at him because actually it was too early for him, and he jogged down the stairs in an attempt to warm himself up.

It was quiet outside, dim with the pale light and there was fog still over the ground, that kind of cold bite in the air that could be smelled as well as smelt, a tangible thing that crawled up your sleeves and down the collar of your jacket. Jacob set off ahead of him into the trees, his red-black rifle over his back and breath fogging in the air. Once they hit the treeline they settled into a pace that Rook would have picked himself a few weeks earlier but that felt punishing then, made his calves burn after a few minutes even with legs longer than Jacob’s.

Other than Jacob’s steady breaths and Rook’s, less so, it was quiet. They carried the only sounds with them, feet crunching over the leaves and fine rocks that made up the forest floor while Boomer ran through the trees beside, behind and ahead of them, coming back every few minutes to make sure they were still with him, situation normal. They didn’t speak to each other and the silence should have been stifling but instead it just was, each of them too familiar with their surroundings to be discomfited by it. Jacob whistled every now and again when Boomer had vanished for too long, brought him crashing back gracelessly and it made Rook wince every time.

They’d been walking for an age when Jacob held his arm out, stopped him where he was.

After a few seconds Rook heard it too, twigs snapping. Branches moving. A man stumbled out of the fog ahead of them – just a peggie, but neither of them relaxed. He took a moment to really see them, looking at everything around him with a defeated, desolate kind of gaze. Patches of burst veins that Rook recognised, splitting into the whites of his eyes and splashed over him, inflamed at every crease. He had blood up his arms from deep scratches there and Rook recognised gouges from fingernails when he saw them, something they hadn’t really covered at the academy but he’d known for years.

“Jacob,” Rook said quietly because Rook was The Sinner but Jacob had the gun, he was the one with the fucking rifle and the peggie had a handgun, the sort of thing that had started to look trivial but could still spatter his brains all over the trees.

“Johnson,” Jacob said, and the man looked at them.

“They’re gone,” Johnson said, swaying in place. He wasn’t crying but his voice was raw, the skin of his neck scratched like he’d had to claw the sound out. “Herald, you have to help, you have to help me find them,” and then there was a _bang_ and a Rorschach of blood sprayed out against the tree behind him, the back of his head exploding when the bullet passed between his eyes and he just crumpled, strings cut.

Boomer immediately ran up to investigate his body while Rook stepped away from Jacob. “What the _fuck_ , Jacob?!” he demanded, a red all his own crawling up inside him, hot and horrified.

Jacob slung his rifle back over his shoulder. “There’s been a few like that recently,” he said shortly, bending to intercept Boomer when he tried to bring the dead man’s handgun back to Rook, sliding the cartridge out and taking it apart with brisk, practiced motions. “They don’t get better. It’s better to put them out of their misery.”

“Because of the bliss?” Rook asked, he seethed, he shuddered with remembered pain (please, _please_ and the sky cracking open).

Jacob shook his head, walking over to the man and crouching, tilting his ruined skull to the side. “No Bites,” he pointed out. Blood had matted hair to the man’s neck when it had still had a function, but there were no scars. “No bliss allowed for the ones stationed by Joseph, either.” He straightened after wiping his hands on a clean bit of the man’s shirt, all business. “We’re going back to the house.”

Rook moved to get in his way, hand stretched out to stop him. “I saw this in the woods the other day,” he said, heart beating fury-fast with adrenaline that had gone nowhere, a corpse in the trees he hadn’t left there. “If your people are going crazy, I want to know why.”

Jacob took another step forward and into his hand so it was pressing against the muscles of his chest, so that the force of him was present and weighted in opposition, daring Rook to push back. “You want to do this?” he asked, soft-deadly. “Because you’d better be fucking ready, deputy.”

Rook took a sharp breath in through his nose and tension was rolling up through him, coiling up and he _felt_ fucking ready, fingers digging into Jacob’s chest and _fuck_ he was solid, built out of bricks and Rook was,

Rook was stepping back in the end, Rook lowered his hand and gestured to where he thought the house might be. “After you,” he said bitterly, because he did know, he knew not to ask the Seeds for anything and Jacob glared at him for a second when he saw that on his face, bit something back and didn’t shoulder-check him on the way past, but it was a very near thing.

 

It didn’t take nearly as long to get back as it had to get out there and Rook made straight for his room, taking the stairs two at a time and finding Peaches still curled up on the bed, yawning hugely when he tossed his jacket near her and grabbed the phone. Hesitated for a second, but,

he always answered, didn’t he,

so Rook typed it out before he could think better of it and hit _send_.

 **Rook  
** _what the hell is going on with the peggies_

and reliable as the sunrise, his phone read _incoming call – John_ (blue, blue, blue) not a minute later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is clear upon review of the evidence that Joseph Seed is a deviant both sexual and otherwise, in this essay I will
> 
> But yeah. Every now and again I just go "what are you doing you garrulous, pretentious fuck" and then I realise it's like two in the morning and oh no! it's too late! I already posted it, you can suck it, _better thoughts_. (John has a massive possessiveness kink and this includes stamping the deputy with planes, I will die on this hill if I have to)
> 
> Chapter title from Dancing Bones by Shelby Merry.


	15. campanula rotundifolia

“Rook,” John all but purred down the line, sound quality too good for comfort. “I see you got my gift.”

“The peggies,” Rook prompted.

“Oh, I’m glad that social niceties haven’t died along with your _gratitude_ ,” John said thinly. “I’m doing well, how are you?”

Rick pinched the bridge of his nose, a reflex shaped like his mother looming in his brain. It was _John_ , though.

It _was_ John, though.

“I’m fine,” he replied, rubbing his hand down his face. “Thank you for the phone, I … appreciate it.” After a second of silence, he added, “it’s nice and you didn’t have to, so. Thank you. John.”

“… Oh,” John said, a little softly. “You’re welcome.”

Rook cleared his throat, spoke too loud to compensate for the pause and winced from it. “But the–”

“The peggies,” John interrupted. “Yes, I know how to read.”

Rook glowered at his chest of drawers. He needed John to talk to him. Unfortunately this meant he had to talk to John, who was dizzying to manage at the best of times. An Escher, staircases leading to edges made of nothing, made of just more stairs. “The peggies,” he repeated. “Something’s going on with them.”

“You didn’t try to help one, did you?” John asked, the devil in his idle tone. “If you’ve walked into a bullet trying to help some lunatic…”

 “John,” Rook said in his best even voice.

“ _Rook_ ,” John shot back, bouncing off it faster than Rook liked. “I’m aware of the problem, it’s why I’m here. Did Jacob give you the phone case too? It’s supposed to be indestructible, for a given value of that word in your mouth. He probably backed over it after you skulked off to the woods.”

Rook pulled the phone away to look at it and then put it back to his ear. “I don’t have a case. What have you found?”

“Nothing. We haven’t found the cause yet. At first the theory was your friends in the _resistance_ had been tampering with the bliss, but that didn’t bear out. I was sceptical anyway, given the overall lack of _scientific drive_ the locals seemed to have.”

He’d still called them stupid, but Rook had to recognise he’d tried to rephrase, to exercise tact from a muscle long since atrophied. “You’re not telling me it’s random.”

John scoffed. “Nothing’s random. It’s just not the bliss. Which I maintained from the start, since only Unbitten are affected and none of Faith’s, which implies the opposite. Jacob’s been testing bliss exposure against his men, using my faithful as a control – which has been just _lovely_ ,” he added.

Stopped.

“Rook. You haven’t actually been shot by one of them.”

“One of them tried,” Rook said with a shrug, body broadcasting to an empty room. “Jacob shot the other.”

“That’s because Jacob has sense. You seemed a lot readier to shoot our followers when we didn’t want that, how _helpful_ of you.”

Rook rubbed his face again, his energy already waning. “I can help with this,” he said, sitting down heavily on the end of the bed.

John made an interested noise. “Do you miss me that much, Rook?”

“I’m,” but that wasn’t right, present-tense in grammar, possessive in the ways that mattered, “I was,” Rook corrected and that wasn’t right either, felt like giving something up so in the end he let the sentence end. Let it hang there, past-present of _be_ both wrong in his mouth and a phone he couldn’t just flick shut. _Police officer_ at the end as an end, not a means.

He heard a click, John swallowing dry. “I can call you back,” he said slow-steady-wary, a hand to a dog with the fingers curled into the palm so he didn’t lose them. “When I know more.” Rook the dog, Rook the _dog_ when he was the one who’d-

Past tense, there – he caught-clawed it back and breathed slow, let the thought sink down. “Thank you,” he said calmly. “Good luck,” and he hung up. Held the phone in his hand for a second before slipping it into his back pocket, reaching over to wake Peaches just to touch something, someone. She rolled and stuck her paws out long in a stretch even though she knew he was just going to stick his fingers between the pads, flexing them idly around his fingers for as long as he held on, claws safely tucked away.

“What the fuck am I doing?” he asked her, and she yawned in his face.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook was getting itchy again, skin crawling with boredom and books he was too riled up to read properly, and in the end he found himself outside again. Jacob eyeing him on his way out the door but he didn’t have a pack, waved his phone before he jogged down the porch so hey, that was allowed too. He wandered around the house and he already knew the woods nearby so he investigated Joseph’s home instead, found a garden out back and saw an opportunity.

One already embraced by peggies with broad-brimmed hats and tiny pitchforks, which he ignored as he walked up.

The peggies were afraid of him, which wasn’t surprising. They were too afraid to say no when The Sinner wandered out of nowhere while they were in the garden around the side and behind Joseph’s house and started pulling up weeds. They worked around him, all glances out of the edges of their eyes and moving slow until they couldn’t anymore and walked away like they wanted to run. Once he’d made it clear that he wasn’t leaving because he fucking lived in that house and he could help in the garden if he wanted to.

Fuck, it was a big garden to get through, though.

Someone had a thing for harebells, planted an army of blue-purple blooms to sway in the breeze on thin stalks. Some poet liked harebells too but Rook couldn’t remember who, thought _John_ and buried his name in the soil with dirt-dark fingertips, pressed it into the holes left by the hawkweed he was pulling up by the roots. They resisted hard, rough at the base and then coming out like tearing from the ground and it was a little like violence, but not enough and Rook had a pile of botanical debris up to his thigh when he took a break. The skin on the back of his neck, the tops of his shoulders, his nose was stretched hot-tight and just a sunburn, pink when he checked his arms and he was too big to stay hunched down for so long, so low (wolf-whistles from dispatch) so he

He lay down on the grass, prickly on his back while he basked in the breeze, closed his eyes to feel it against his face. Paused to dig the phone out of his back pocket where it was digging into his back and tried again, left it in the grass. Felt the sweat cooling on his face, his chest and relaxed until something icy touched his forehead and he shot up with a yelp. Joseph smiled down at him faintly and held out a glass of water, condensation down the sides and ice clinking against the sides. Rook took it after a second and Joseph sat beside him, legs bent in front of him to rest his elbows on, taking a sip of his own drink and closing his eyes under the sunglasses. Like he was enjoying the sun and the breeze and the quiet like Rook was, like he wasn’t hellfire in a white button-down, didn’t have sins carved into the forearms bared by rolled-up sleeves.

Rook took a long drink from it, felt it slide and chill down past his lungs and into his stomach. “I’m surprised you’re here,” he said, pressing the cold glass to the side of his neck.

Joseph inclined his head. “My brothers have… made suggestions,” he allowed, opening his eyes again and looking out over the garden. “Their opinions are important to me, and I am glad to see them reconciled.”

“Suggestions for what?” Rook asked, and Joseph glanced down to Rook’s phone when it dinged, messages lined up down the screen with,

 **John  
** _Jacob said I never gave him a case_

 **John  
** _check his pockets_

and smiled a little more, still not showing teeth. Preacher-patient and benevolent like it always was, from a great height but falling, fonder. “I can be stubborn,” Joseph told him, confessed apropos of nothing. “Proud. One sin of many, one we share. But I want you to be happy here.” Lifted his gaze to look at Rook, sincere and sombre. “To find purpose.”

Rook took another sip to avoid having to respond for a second, let it chill his mouth to try and cool his tongue too, to compose something cold for him. “Understood,” was what he settled on, acknowledgement without agreement.

Joseph took another sip of water and Rook watched his throat, couldn’t stop himself because Joseph was someone to watch, all bright eyes and marked skin and surprising muscle wrapped around that intensity only fanaticism could instil. It didn’t say anything about him, Rook thought – Joseph was Joseph was a force of nature, was everything unnerving-unstoppable about the Seeds, optimised.

“You were meant to be here with us,” Joseph said, catching a drop of water down his glass with his thumb. “We will discover what that means in the time left before the Collapse.”

Rook frowned. Finished off his water. “You said the first seal was broken. When the helicopter went down. Wasn’t I meant to go break seals?” he asked.

Joseph nodded. “You were,” he agreed, then, “do you know what harebells mean, Rook?”

Rook blinked, looked out over the blues and purple and petals, bobbing in the breeze. “Don’t know much about flowers.”

Joseph pushed his sunglasses up, adjusted them into place. Stray hairs escaped from the bun, drifted down to the nape of his neck. “They mean humility. I am just a man. God speaks to me, but I cannot know His wishes until he makes them known, and His ways are mysterious. We must have faith.”

“Haven’t you heard? _Faith_ is afraid of me,” Rook said, but it lacked the venom he wanted because he’d left it buried in the dirt with poems about flowers he was never going to learn.

A flash of teeth as Joseph laughed almost soundlessly. “I’m not,” he said with finality. “We’re not.”

“What do you even think I add to this?” Rook crunched a piece of ice between his teeth. “I don’t believe in God,” _I won’t change my mind_ , “I don’t have an in to your familial soul bond. You’ve got violence covered and you don’t care about the law either. Maybe there’s another reason the bond doesn’t work, maybe you just don’t _need_ me,” and the word stuck on teeth that had never felt sharper, that stung like inhaling cold air in the snow because Joseph wasn’t listening, saw Rook but not the space they’d already filled, the one made too small for him to fit.

Joseph hummed a note, long and steady ( _Amazing Grace_ and wind whipping around Rook’s ears). “Harebell has a second meaning,” Joseph remarked, words syllable-perfect and slow-southern, smiling that sad, knowing smile when Rook looked back at him. “Grief.”

He braced his hand on Rook’s shoulder to stand, took the empty glass out of his hands. Ran his hand over his hair and went to leave while Rook stared out, blue-purple-grief staring back at him, the yellow spots of hawkweed he hadn’t gotten to yet.

“Oh, and Rook,” Joseph added, stop-turned and told him over his shoulder. “Jacob likes to be asked. To be able to do what is asked,” and with that curious advice he took both glasses inside, let the screen door swing shut after him.

Rook looked at the house for a minute, the white-wood porch and then he got back to his feet. Stretched his arms over his head and scanned the garden. Still plenty left to do, he thought, and looking down at hands covered in dirt and starting to blister, he realised that he should have grabbed gloves before he started.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook set his alarm again and rolled Peaches off the covers the next morning because she was getting lazy too, too happy to eat pounds of meat labelled _cat_ in the fridge and nap on his stomach in the afternoons. He let her out first when Jacob opened the door, hoping to startle him, to un-dignify him but Jacob just shifted to let her pass. “You don’t walk cats,” he rumbled, and Rook just yawned and slid by as well.

They didn’t meet any peggies this time – or maybe Peaches did first, nowhere near as ready as Boomer to slink under Jacob’s hands, to return to a whistle. She came back every now and again to show Rook something, to eye Jacob with something like hunger and make Rook feel clumsy as frozen leaves crunched underfoot, edged with the frost. She deigned to let him open the door for her when they got back after dawn, Rook a little winded because Jacob shouldn’t be able to call that pace walking, not for over an _hour_ , and Jacob stopped him before he could go inside himself, said,

“back here, twenty minutes,”

and loped off around the house.

Rook thought about disobeying. Then he thought of Jacob pinning him down on the riverbank while he howled, thought about other things (only _you_ ) and just grabbed some water, was waiting there by the time Jacob got back.

Jacob led him to a small area, grassy and walled off with wooden posts, something someone might have kept a sick sheep in to leave them quarantined, preparing to lamb. Overgrown, one side of the fence collapsed and easy to hop over. Rook followed Jacob in reluctantly and kept as far back as possible while Jacob looked around, nodded.

“You know why wolves?” Jacob asked him, taking off his jacket and slinging it over the fence, the grey t-shirt underneath stretched across his chest and worn soft with washing. “Because wolves… cannot be domesticated. Not deep down. You can take them from the woods. Get them to like you, look for you, take food from the hand, but that wolf gets hungry and you – you’re not pack and you’re nothing.” He tilted his head to the sides, stretched his neck. “You’re _meat_.”

Rook watched this unenthused strip show with interest. “What are you doing?” he asked without letting it into his tone, bland and unaffected and empty as the body they’d left in the woods the day before.

“You – Joseph and John want to domesticate you,” Jacob continued like he hadn’t spoken, tucking his dog tags and rabbit foot down under the neck of his t-shirt. Uncomplicating himself visually, tactically. Talking like he was back in front of slides in the dark, teaching Rook something Jacob knew well enough to be knowing about, a hard-hurting sermon all his own. “To file your teeth down. You’re chasing your tail, chewing your leg off just to have something to sink your teeth into. One way to fix that.” Jacob turned to face him. Lifted his arm, beckoned him in with two fingers. “Come on,” cocky and vicious.

Rook took this in, Jacob’s planted feet and the coil of muscle ready for lunging, for hurting. “No,” he replied.

Jacob’s eyes were lit up, that gleam back and burning. “I thought you might say that,” in his rough voice, and then he punched him in the face.

 

 

Pain made Rook kind of an asshole, Rook reflected when the red haze lifted enough to see the blood on his knuckles, the blood across Jacob’s mouth and that forest fire raging in him when Jacob tackled him to the ground, tore the mountain down, drove his shoulder into him hard enough to crack a rib between gravity and bloodlust. Rook bucked up and got his knee between them, made Jacob grunt with the impact and kicked him off the rest of the way, nerves waking up like pins and needles shuddering over him, a taste like blood (was blood) spilling over his tongue. Jacob eyed him, sunk low and ready.

 

Yeah, okay.

 

 

Rook running on adrenaline could hold his own, could take a hit, could get past Jacob’s guard with speed and angles and beat him down with sheer ferocity, but had nothing on him in grappling. The academy had taught him holds and takedowns but his size worked against him if Jacob got him to the ground, limbs too long and Jacob, not small but easily able to get around him. So Jacob liked to flip him, take him out at the knees to avoid a hit from Rook that would have thrown him to the ground instead, would have cracked him at the seams because Jacob fought mean but Rook fought like madmen and _fuck_ ,

Rook loved to fight.

“Stop aiming for my face,” Jacob growled when he’d gotten thrown against the fence again, blocked Rook’s follow-through with a shuddering impact, stopped an elbow that would have broken his jaw. “Aim for the body if you haven’t got a clear shot.”

“Face hurts more,” Rook pointed out, panting and flexing his hands, numb from going for a guard as solid as Jacob’s.

“Not more than a broken arm,” Jacob said, spitting blood to the ground and wiping his mouth with his arm, smearing red (more red) over his face and into his beard.

Rook had to concede the point but he was already bouncing on his feet, a bruise swelling on his jaw and ribs (body) hurting when he breathed and feeling like he fit his skin all covered in spikes again, so, “don’t want me going for the moneymaker?” he taunted, shifting back to balance on the balls of his feet. “Saw your posters, _Herald Jacob_. Good angle for you,” (only you _only you **stop it**_ ).

Jacob grinned mirthlessly. Rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Tim-ber, fucker,” he said, and Rook had a split second to be confused before he lunged at him.

 

“How does it feel?” Jacob asked a few seconds later, crouched by him and smirking through the split lip while Rook wheezed, breath driven out of him from hitting the ground back-first and staying splayed there. “We’ll get a ream of posters out of a tree your size, _deputy_.”

“Fuck you,” Rook managed, glaring at him with watering eyes and his blood singeing him, hot-fast in his veins while his limbs were still rebooting. “Shrub,” dragging himself painfully onto his belly, “hedge,” he added, pushing himself up. “ _Sapling_ ,” he threw in for good measure when he’d stood, back cracking as he straightened up, and up, and up. He was readying himself when Jacob scowled.

“Your phone won’t shut up,” and he was right, it was going off in quick succession so Rook went around Jacob to the fence, sinking down on one knee a little heavily to grab it, leaning against the fence to read,

 

 **John  
** _I found the dynamite in my hangar_

 **John  
** _you think you’re funny_

 **John** _  
I’m going to make you eat it if you scratched my plane_

 

Rook smirked at the mental image of John finding the frowny-face he’d carved on the underside of Ascension’s wing and suddenly there was a presence at his side, warmth and breath over his arm when Jacob leaned in. “John,” he grumbled as soon as he saw the texts, more coming in even when Rook couldn’t move, couldn’t see them any more from fight-flight taking over and abruptly it wasn’t funny. Wiped his face, sweat and blood onto his jacket and draping it over his shoulder. “Figures.”

“I like dynamite,” Rook murmured.

“I remember,” Jacob replied, glaring while Rook typed out,

 **Rook  
** _:(_

before tucking the phone into his pocket. “More?” he asked, calmer, and Jacob shook his head.

“You’re getting tired. Sloppy. We’ll do this again so you don’t get soft,” and Rook almost argued before he let it drop again. Jacob shoulder-checked him, too light to hurt and really just a bump, jumping the fence easily and starting back towards the house.

Jacob, who liked to be asked (to be able).

Rook hopped the fence after him, sore muscles making themselves known in trembling at the edges, an unsteady landing. “Jacob,” he said, careful (made of stone, made of _stone_ ), “do you,” words dragging out like teeth pulled, “have a phone case I can use?”

Jacob stopped, raised his eyebrows. Gave him a measuring glance, but nodded in the end. He reached into his jacket, fished around briefly before tossing a black rectangular case his way.

“Thanks,” Rook said, trying to puzzle out how to open the angular black phone prison, which Jacob watched him struggle with for a full thirty seconds before walking back and taking it away from him again.

“Took out a heavy squad with a shovel and a handful of hallucinogenic leaves but a phone case, that’s what’s got you beat?” he asked with a huff, fingernails finding a crease in the side, mockery without malice and startling for it.

Rook let out a noise, frustrated and head bent over it beside him, proximity unimportant after the third punch. Said, “I’ve got big hands, everything is tiny to me,” just as Jacob clicked it open and smirked up at him, something filthy at the edge.

“Wanna bet?” he asked, voice gone gritty and smoke-dark, and let Rook snatch the case and quickly walk back inside, the sound of Jacob’s laughter following him in.

 

He should have stuck to books.

 

 

-

 

 

Joseph made dinner because he seemed to like that, seemed to like the domesticity of feeding someone the same way John did, maybe just liked Rook accepting something in the absence of better options. He sat by Rook’s feet on the couch afterwards like five days in the wood and water (scales down his palm) had never happened, both of them reading and Joseph’s hand wrapped around Rook’s ankle lightly because it got too close to his lap, Rook too tired and sore to argue, the aches installed in him by Jacob making him something like compliant. Joseph sliding into that space, filling the difference where Jacob had beaten him into a new and bruised shape and skin humming because he’d needed it.

His space, always, unending, Rook curving towards that point of gravity just because it was there. That hand on his ankle the closest thing to gentle in his life, an irony all of its own. A presence made of palms and presses and piercing eyes, and it was natural – no, it was inevitable that Rook, a healthy man with an unhealthy relationship with danger, would dream about it. _Grief_ and _humility_ and long fingers, his memories of Joseph made of textures and it was _normal_ when he woke with a gasp five minutes before his alarm the next morning, sweat cooling and skin starving for it, body clinging to the ghost of contact, the phantom slide of a body over his, lean and strong and pressing, pressing _down_. When he’d made some noise and woken himself, could still feel Joseph arching up under his tongue – _you are wanted_ – and muscles of his stomach flexing under Rook’s mouth, the scrape of his teeth dragging over sweat-salted skin and those hands yanking Rook’s hair back with a moan and  _needing_  and

Rook waking alone and hard in his pants, hand halfway below his waistband and feeling his pulse throbbing through the skin there, shuddering to be so close to the edge and about to groan with it.

Rook eased back to the bed, spine unlocking by degrees to let him sag down and he was shaking all over, hips twitching just once into empty air (bones arching towards no one). “Oh fuck no,” he whispered, and he got up those five minutes early so Jacob could bleed it out of him.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, fuck something. 
> 
> Chapter title from the scientific name for harebell. For the curious - hawkweed is a weed and a low priority invasive pest in Montana. It means quicksightedness.


	16. take my arm, break it in half

 

The wall was still there. No one had seen, because Rook was alone and he had to remember that, he had to feel that when memory failed him. Felt it still, and the headache proved it – he met Joseph’s gaze with composure the next morning at the table, made a wall of himself too because Joseph wasn’t fucking _psychic_ , couldn’t have known. Wouldn’t ever know if Rook could stop looking at his hands and shit, fuck, he’d been talking. “What?” Rook asked, tone neutral. “Sorry.”

Affection on Joseph Seed’s face was an adjustment. To Rook, to his worldview, to the eerie tint of his eyes that got soft with it and patient, so terribly fucking patient. “You seem distracted.”

Rook looked down at his mug of tea. “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose.”

The wall was there. It always had been.

Joseph drew breath and moved and when he reached out Rook dragged his hand back so fast that he almost sent his mug flying.

Joseph blinked at him. Rook stood. “I’m going to the yard,” he said, and he took his mug to the sink.

 

 

It wasn’t running away.

It wasn’t running away, because there was nothing to run from. It was all in his head, because that’s all dreams were.

But Rook spent all day in the garden, and stayed out until the lights in the house went dark – pretended he didn’t feel eyes on him. That he hadn’t seen Joseph at the window, had been as alone in the harebells as he was in his thoughts.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook was sitting in the kitchen wrapping an icepack in a tea-towel when the video call came in the next day, a bad bruise spilling-swelling across his cheek and jaw where Jacob had headbutted him. He answered it expecting it to be a normal phone call and got the shock of his life when, “what the fuck have you done to yourself now,” rung out on speaker, out of John’s irritated expression on a screen five inches by eight. John looked tired in high-resolution, which for John meant sharpened, meant his stream-blue eyes gleamed manic, his teeth shone sharp and his words got bitten out, all of him honed to that scalpel’s edge. All Needles, always.

“John,” Joseph said, startling Rook into jumping when he walked in from the living room with his warm voice ( _you are wanted_ ) and his lifted hands. “Brother,” and Rook had forgotten how fucking _lovely_ Joseph’s baritone was when it wasn’t preaching death, sighing things in his sleep.

“John,” Rook greeted too, gritted out through a suddenly tense jaw.

“What happened to your face?” John asked, eyes narrowed, flicking between him and Joseph thoughtfully.

Joseph came closer to Rook – he could see it in the camera, The Father walking up from behind. Felt the proximity prickling on his skin. “Jacob and Rook were,”

“–oh that’s perfect, I supposed Jacob’s bleeding out in the living room–”

“practicing,” Joseph finished, and something in that tone ( _finality_ ) from him made something in John subside on screen. Deflate.

“Jacob started it,” Rook pointed out, trying to hold the icepack in one hand and simultaneously angle the phone so John couldn’t see up his nose or down his shirt, so that Joseph was a little less visible to him as well.

“I don’t believe you,” John said, who didn’t give a shit how far Rook could see down his shirt if he went by how many buttons he had undone. Rook wasn’t entirely sure it was buttoned at all, just navy on an inked chest and he dragged his eyes up when Joseph helped him out and took the phone, flinched when his hand brushed his. Joseph ignored it but John’s eyes flicked over Rook’s face from where Joseph propped the phone up on the table.

“Well,” he said slowly. “Anyway. I didn’t call just see to whatever injuries you’ve given yourself this time.”

Rook pressed the ice to his cheekbone with a hiss. “Then why use video?”

“I said ‘just’,” John reminded him carelessly. Fair enough, so Rook waited. John settled back in his chair with a sigh, shifted to be comfortable that way Rook knew himself, had felt after every double shift. “We’ve had three more,” John told them. “One’s dead, the other two are in isolation. Sampson’s performing an autopsy, but blood results came back… disappointing. I was hoping it would be something neat. Manageable, like a drug,” and John Seed _would_ call drugs _manageable_ , Rook thought hysterically, “but there’s no one here sophisticated enough to put something like this together, not something that will only act on one group. We’re keeping an eye on them to see how whatever this is progresses. They may as well be useful.” That tone again, like it was something they had done to be inconvenient. A choice, the way everything seemed to be to John, _yes_ to all the wrong questions.

“It could be a disease,” Rook pointed out. “There have been some that only get people without soul bonds. The opposite should be able to happen.”

“Unlikely. The last peggie to show signs was one of the controls in the bunker,” John dismissed, which made Rook interested, made his interest too obvious from how John tilted his head a little and preened under his full attention. Joseph leaned over Rook’s shoulder so he could see John, be seen, focused on John and John immediately focusing on him in turn because Joseph just did that (was someone to _watch_ ). “He’d been in isolation for the last three weeks under quarantine to be sure. We locked a few up when we noticed the pattern. Held separately, controlled food and drink only and nothing in or out. All very _clinical_ ,” a word he pronounced with strange distaste.

“You imprisoned them,” Rook said. “Just to be _safe_.”

John waved a hand, waved it off like nothing to keep men and women locked up underground, trap them in concrete boxes with nothing but canned food, filtered water and faith to sustain them. “The others haven’t gotten sick yet, but I’m keeping them in there to be sure. They’ll be fine.”

“You imprisoned them,” Rook repeated, a mansion of rooms without occupants, with the doorways bricked off (all _walls_ no _exits_ ), “alone, in your bunker,” and something strange was happening to his hands, making them numb at the fingertips and when he looked down it was because he’d tightened them on the edge of the table, pressed-white flesh where he was cutting off his own circulation with the force of his grip.

“… Joseph, what’s happening?” John asked quickly, and Joseph lifted the phone out of Rook’s view.

“We’ll speak soon, John,” he said, and hung up, put the phone back on the table. Left his hand resting on it where he’d reached over Rook to place it, body bracketing Rook. “It’s kind of you,” he told Rook quietly, very close to him and slightly higher from still standing, even leaning as he was. “But they were glad to be of service – they went willingly.”

“Yeah,” Rook said. “So did I,” and he ducked under Joseph’s arm, put a few steps between them before he faced him. “We made our choices and these are the consequences, so fuck us, right?” he asked, spat it out to see the wariness in Joseph’s eyes, that snare-stillness come back because he was sick of softness, he was sick of numb hands and dying in his dreams, over and over (and not anymore). “But you three, it’s funny how _you_ make choices and _I_ end up here,” hurled it at him deep-hurting, Joseph shifting into something predatory and not blinking once as he watched him, “getting walls closed inside my own fucking _head_ , words carved into me and _brainwashed_ just because I got _stuck_ with you through some cosmic fucking joke, like anyone would _choose_ this-”

Joseph was shockingly strong.

From Jacob it could be anticipated (not mitigated) but Joseph grabbed the front of Rook’s shirt and _hauled_ him over to himself, Rook staggering forward but stopping himself before they could collide and Joseph’s anger wasn’t _anger_ , it was Wrath because it was on a different kind of scale, towering and great and the kind of feeling cathedrals got built to house.

They stood toe to toe for a long moment, Joseph’s grip curled into his shirt and keeping him there, hard enough to draw the neck tight enough to strangle Rook. “What now?” Rook asked, and it took a second for that great and terrible shape to shift, to relieve enough pressure for him to see he was still cutting off Rook’s circulation.

Another moment for him to really realise it, and then he let go all at once. Joseph looked at his hands like they were strangers to him. Stepped back and walked out without another word.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook hadn’t expected it to blow over – he’d eaten alone that night and hadn’t heard Joseph come back to the house.  But it had been too much to hope that Joseph hadn’t told Jacob.

Their morning fight was going well for him, which necessarily meant it was going badly for Jacob. But it was always too much to hope (its own kind of drug, _not even once_ ) and Jacob was back to that flinty stare, hard-short criticism or acknowledgement when Rook executed something particularly well (particularly poorly) and it wasn’t relaxing, it wasn’t unwinding. It wasn’t _working_ so he’d flipped Jacob – which was hard because Jacob wasn’t just heavy, cut with muscle, he was also _mean as hell –_ and Jacob came up from a perfect breakfall and said, “good,” in that way he had, so curt it almost sounded bored and Rook heard,

good,

and,

cull the herd,

and Rook’s vision swam red, he’d already broken away to vomit sick-sour by the fence in a heartbeat, shudders rippling over him like an earthquake to leave him gasping in the grass. Everything in him coming out, retching and violent for too long and his body saying _no_ the best way it could. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand when he was empty of it, when he thought it was over, when he could taste bile instead of blood and he looked up to see Jacob watching him with an unnervingly blank expression. Stomach acid on the grass because they did this before breakfast, because there’d been nothing to bring up but he had to try.

“Done?” Jacob asked, and Rook just looked at him because he wasn’t, he wasn’t okay. He had an enemy in him made of red-bright slides and aching cold.

“Yeah,” he answered, and Jacob’s expression didn’t change. A slide with nothing on it but not tense. Just empty.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Jacob told him and Rook realised he was still shaking, overwhelmed with adrenaline preparing for a fight that wasn’t real and never had been. He shifted, fell to the side away from the vomit and leaned against a ruined fencepost. He put his hands through his hair and closed his eyes.

After a moment, he felt Jacob settle in the grass beside him. Rook smiled, joyless and grim, mouth still acid-sour. “Weak, right?” because he felt weak, was weak, the rubble of a mountain.

“If you were weak, I’d have just killed you,” Jacob said, matter-of-fact. Business-like. The sky is blue, the sun will rise, the weak will die.

“Was it easy? Conditioning me,” Rook asked, half a shove (a reminder) to push Jacob _back_ and half-dreading the answer because he felt like he’d broken so fast, wanted to know if it had felt easy to Jacob too. If any fucking one thing had been easy about any of this, about them – if he’d ever been simple instead of leaving parts of him across Hope County and out the door when Joseph walked away, taken with him guilt of Rook’s he didn’t deserve.

Jacob showed him the courtesy of considering it seriously. “It’s straightforward,” he said after a period of thought. “If you know what to do, where the line is. You want them broken enough to work – go too far and they go crazy, no use for anything but target practice.” He brushed some dirt from his palms, knees bent in front of him. “So I starved you first. Kept you drugged and confused until you got bad enough to get taken to the site. Desperate.” He tilted his head, squinted in thought and rubbed a hand absently over his beard, the stubble higher on his cheeks where he hadn’t trimmed it in a while. “After that, you were there three days. About average for the programming to set in, but the others in your batch died. So not easy, but your body took it better than the others. You were strong. I was going to let you go, see what you did next before your second trial.”

Rook took in this clinical assessment of his capture, his brainwashing (a _second trial_ ) and he wiped his mouth again because it still tasted bitter. “There were two in the room,” he remembered. Flies on their eyes, Eli’s voice and others ( _they’re all_ dead).

“You took conditioning well,” Jacob mused. “You’re good at killing, had the muscle memory in there already. And I was the one doing it.”

Rook rubbed the back of his neck. “Weird skill to brag about,” he muttered.

Jacob shook his head, expression going dark. “No. You’re mine,” said simply, directly and Rook’s whole body caught in its aftershocks, “I was always meant to be in your head, so you didn’t stand a chance. I tore right the fuck through you.”

He didn’t sound sorry, Rook noticed. Didn’t sound proud, either. Just certain, sure, stating facts.

“You’re not giving yourself enough credit,” Rook said. “That was all your general aptitude for brainwashing,” and he could feel the sneer curling his lip. “You’re only in my head as much as your other _only ones_. I’d know.”

River-heavy-hostile, Jacob shoot him in a sidelong look. “It all comes down to that, doesn’t it.” A muscle in his jaw was Rook’s only warning before, “have it your way,” and then he’d shoved Rook over, flattened him to the ground and Jacob swung his leg over to hold him down and leaned over him, palm heavy enough on his chest to crush. “I saw you,” Jacob whispered, and Rook learned that a rough voice that low turned to gravel, turned to sandpaper on his skin. “You cracked like fucking glass in my hands and you told me you were dying,” pressing down _harder_ , Rook’s hand lashing out to wrap around Jacob’s throat and dig in in warning gone unheeded. “In one of _my_ rooms with _my_ song playing and when I came for you the whole fucking hotel was on _fire_.” Jacob bared his teeth, that muzzle-flare gleam in his eyes and a blade under rushing water, Rook heard,

howling like one of his dogs

and he remembered Tammy’s wolverine smile. “I saw you,” and Rook struggling to breathe while Jacob kept talking, always _talking_ , “so you can fight it all you want but we’re yours to fight, aren’t we? You can’t walk away any more than _we_ can.”

Rook wasn’t a wolf but he was growling deep in his chest somewhere under Jacob’s hand, it made him dig his fingers into Jacob’s throat harder. Points of heat surging under his fingers, bruise-blood swelling. Jacob’s eyes were getting darker, leaning over him until he was all he could see, the grass against his back fading into just the heaviness keeping him down, Jacob’s weight on his hips. “Fuck you,” Rook hissed and he wanted to _hurt_ him, he wanted to shove him down and crawl inside his skin and make him feel it, make _him_ feel weak and shuddering and,

oh

          _no_.

“Trust me,” Jacob said, half-dark and all teeth while Rook’s mind tried desperately to shut down, “I’ve _thought_ about it.” Leaned down even further, too-close-too-close-too- _close_ and warm, everywhere and then he paused, scanning Rook’s frozen expression.

 _Don’t_ , Rook thought, he instructed himself, he told his treacherous fucking features. _Don’t you dare_.

Something flickered on Jacob’s face. The silence stretched on, realisation sparking in those so-blue fucking eyes.

“… You want it,” Jacob said, and Rook didn’t want that naked shock in his voice, he didn’t want to be the one that could shock Jacob Seed (always ready, full of rage). “You _want_ me.”

“I’ve given up on wanting things from any of you,” Rook snapped and he twisted, Jacob was stunned enough to be thrown gracelessly to the side. Rook scrambled away a few feet and into a crouch, watched Jacob like a caged animal cornered. Jacob rolled onto his hands and feet like a lion clawing itself up, eyes burning and all six-foot-fucking three of him (the hurricane) ready to pounce before a voice interrupted them.

“Herald Jacob.”

“What?!” Jacob demanded, not breaking away and voice loud.

“There’s been an incident at the river. We need your guidance.”

One of Jacob’s. Rook could see him in his peripheral vision. Comfortable with the machine gun in his hands, red-black and dead-eyed, belts of ammunition around his chest.

Jacob held his gaze for another long moment, another age before that light died down – he visibly breathed deep before he stood and stepped away. Rook took in a deep breath of his as the world rushed back in to fill the void, impossibly large, that Jacob had left behind.

“We’re done here,” Jacob told him, voice tight, and he left without another word.

Yeah.

Rook had gotten that.

Rook had been going on hour-long runs every morning, but it still took an age for his heart to settle because fuck his fucking life.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook didn’t set his alarm that night and Jacob didn’t wake him in the morning. Joseph wasn’t in the kitchen either, and the house had that expectant feeling a home did when it was unoccupied.

Rook stood in the empty kitchen eating toast and it didn’t bother him because he’d loved living alone, it didn’t bother him at all except,

he needed to shoot something.

 

 

God.

He really, really did.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook set up cans around the property after scoping out a way to climb onto the roof of the house, wandering out into the woods and guessing at sightlines but mostly trying to wander out of his head in the process. He swiped a rifle from the weapons locker in the small storage warehouse that Jacob hadn’t even tried to warn him out of, that he was pretty sure Jacob was watching to see if he’d enter, and he climbed up onto the grey-tiled roof and settled in.

He’d taken out one of the easier cans, perched on the edge of a garden bed and it was working, he could feel himself calming as he lined up for the can he’d throw onto the top of the shed. He had to control his breath to keep shots steady and he fell into the familiar cadence of it, the killing breath taking over when his phone rang loud and shrill from his back pocket. Rook jumped, shot going wide into the forest, scattering birds out of the branches.

He watched them fly away, phone continuing to ring from his pocket, and he let out a very long sigh.

“John,” he answered, not bothering to check.

“It’s video, Rook, I don’t need to see your ear in such _high-definition_.”

Rook pulled it away from his head – John’s face greeted him on the screen, wearing his sunglasses and, from the looks of it, in a car. Sun shining on him through the window. He grinned at him.

“Yes?” Rook asked, setting the phone up on his spare case of definition next to him. John would just bitch if he couldn’t see him but there was nothing obliging Rook to look back and a whole lot to stop him, so he settled back against his rifle and looked through the scope again.

John made a disconcertingly perverse noise. “I like this view,” he remarked, and Rook held his breath for the shot. His finger twitched and _bang!_ – the can neatly pinged off the roof and vanished while John kept talking. “Very … focused. Very not shooting my _things_.”

“Can I help you with something, John?” Rook asked, adjusting the scope for a more distant can half-hidden behind a branch, fuck knew how he’d managed that. “Given how this week has been, I was just planning to shoot things this afternoon, and I’m not picky.”

“Yes, Joseph’s locked down. I assume you’re avoiding him.” John snorted. “He _hates_ that, by the way. He’ll let you think he’s let it go, but no. He’ll wait until you’re already feeling guilty and then crush you with his disappointment. Maybe tie you up, just so you can’t wriggle away from it. Having had you as a prisoner – I’d recommend it. Hm. Maybe I _will_.”

Rook was caught on an earlier sentence. From John’s tone, Joseph’s disappointment worked a little too well on him. Making light of it but his fervour (subsiding, deflating) getting just a little less fervent.

But that wasn’t something he could say, so Rook’s lips twitched. “He’s the only one of you who _hasn’t_ tied me up,” and he had just enough time to curse himself before John leered.

“Unlucky Joseph.”

Unlucky Rook (sixty-six percent and counting) but okay.

“I was wondering about that,” John said, gone sly and (barely) trying not to be. “What happened between you and Joseph, Rook? You looked like you were about to run away when I last saw you. Hunted. I remember, from when I was hunting you.”

Rook readjusted the scope, waited to see if the sudden breeze would die down. “Nothing happened.”

“Funny,” John drawled. “Because Joseph, well, he won’t even say your name and Joseph _loves_ saying your name. Mostly because he got it first,” a sour look when Rook glanced over, “but he just likes names in general. He uses them very effectively, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Rook made a noncommittal noise, shuffled a little further down and concentrated. John let him sit in the silence for a while – a longer while than Rook would have given him credit for maintaining, just watching him look through a scope.

“You can tell me,” John said, and Rook didn’t look away from the scope but he was holding his breath without his finger on the trigger yet, straining to hear and know that thread in John’s voice. That faintest uncertainty again, the hand outstretched (waiting for teeth). “… Rook. Please tell me.”

Rook took the can out first try, deafeningly loud and, “hard to love,” he said quick as a gunshot, a phrase pulled out of him from somewhere deep down and full of guilt, that mirrored the way Joseph’s whole face had closed off. “Someone told me that, a long time ago.”

He couldn’t expect Joseph to be anything other than himself. Couldn’t expect it of any of them, and he had no right. He had no claim to that, to any part of them existing and much less what they could change into. But he could control himself, that was what he’d learned over and over and _over_ and he’d fucked up,

and that was on him. Hard to love, a neat descriptor of a messy problem reaching all the way down. A quick way of reminding himself that he’d fucked up, and he knew why.

“What?” John asked quickly, gave himself away with how eager it was. Jolted Rook back to the present. Rook swallowed, suddenly embarrassed and he didn’t reload his gun. Didn’t look at John, either, just stayed stretched out on the roof.

“Not important,” he heard himself say as he watched Jacob emerge from the forest on the path, blood sprayed across his shirt and that familiar lupine stride. A woman walking behind him with Jacob’s hunter holding her arms, blotched red and defeated, far more blood spattering her. Arterial spray, if he had to guess and he would be the one to guess – he’d seen enough of them. “Forget it,” and he reached over to end the call over John’s loud threats and protests.

Good quality scope, he mused, and tracked them with it all the way back to the small storage building.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook woke to a gunshot that night. Long before than his alarm in the dark, in that time that wasn’t early or late. Liminal space broken by the noise. He rolled out of bed and cocked his head, listening and low to the ground.

The house was still. The wind outside made it creak though, made it settle as it cooled and shrunk like it had lungs of its own. But no footsteps, and Boomer lay sleeping on the bed. As lazy as he’d gotten, he’d always been a good guard dog.

Rook crept across the floor and reached into his bag, dug out the radio he’d taken from the riverside. He made sure the volume was low, rolled the dial for it down with a thumbnail before he switched it on. The bright green light cast the room in dim, strange shadows, made him squint.

He crouched and waited, but nothing came. He slowly rolled through frequencies, crouched there so long that his knees started to feel stiff, but he heard no voices. Not another gunshot.

Rook listened, but he heard nothing and it should have been familiar, familiar enough to be normal but it felt just a little                 quiet.

Quiet enough to hear himself think, but he knew he had to. So he crouched there, radio in hand, and he let himself think about it in the dark and that quiet, where it felt safer than in the sun, than on the grass with Jacob Seed keeping him there.

Rook had learned to trace the pain when he’d gone through the counselling, the treatments, the we-support-you cut-outs that people offered Bitten. It hurt, for a lot of them, and Rook’s Bites didn’t but he had his fair share to deal with so he’d listened. He followed the thought back, that hazy-wrong in the pit of his stomach that had settled when he’d lashed out and Joseph had lashed out _back_ , when he’d walked away from him.

He’d wanted to hurt Joseph, he acknowledged. He’d said true things badly. Worse, he’d said true things to hurt and said it well, which people chalked up to _the truth hurts_ when really the truth just was and people did all the hurting themselves.

He knew about hurting Joseph, hurting the Seeds. The day they had come to arrest him, the Marshal had come with one-page profiles sketched up by people in offices counties away, armed with basic shapes for men who weren’t. Cursory work on cult leaders, taken from records of childhood because they’d dropped off the radar until they’d come back with a vengeance. The analysts saw a bad home there, a worse father, taken apart but didn’t understand what it meant that they clawed back together later all jagged edges and madness circling the drain, the gravitational spike in the universe that was Joseph Seed. And Hudson had sneered because that made it worse, it was so much _worse_ that they reached out to broken people when they’d started life as weeds themselves, been planted by chance just to be cut down by someone cruel who just wanted to hurt,

and Rook had wanted to hurt Joseph, hadn’t he. So he had because Joseph had hurt him, because Joseph had hurt _so many people_ and would hurt more given the chance, wouldn’t look back because Joseph Seed just didn’t work on that kind of scale either, only.

Only.

That wasn’t why he’d wanted to hurt him, Rook had to accept, and felt ashamed because he was an end but the means still counted. He groaned and buried his face in his hands but they were cold from sitting in the dark, out from under the covers so he slunk back to the bed and hauled Boomer over into his lap instead because he never minded, pressed his face to warm fur and breathing.

It wasn’t about who he was sorry to, he told himself. It was about being the man who could be sorry, and he set his alarm again. He lay back down and he knew what he had to do, he had to reach out to Joseph (fingers curled for safety), though,

fucking hell,

he had no idea what to do about Jacob. It didn’t seem right (the shock in his voice and that look on his face) to apologise for wanting someone. Though Rook was really fucking sorry for it.

Shit, he’d just let him punch him in the face, he decided. That always seemed to cheer him up, and Rook pulled the pillow over his stupid goddamn face and screamed. 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say that the alternate title to this chapter was "Self Reflection: being the only good person in Far Cry is really hard" but then I remembered that Kim Rye exists and also it didn't hold with the current theme.  
> Also,  
> Rook: I will not do that thing  
> Rook: I will regret doing that thing and therefore I will not  
> Rook: Good thinking, Rook  
> -not even moments later-  
> Rook: I have done the thing and I regret it  
> Rook: _who could have foreseen this_
> 
> Chapter title from Blood in the Cut by K Flay.


	17. the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you

 

 

Before it had all gone to hell, Hurkman Junior had shown up to a town hall meeting, outraged beyond reason and holding a copy of Joseph Seed’s book. “Have you seen this, the shit they can’t do – y’all even know what fornicatin’  _means_?!” he’d demanded. Rook had been the sheriff’s rep and was at the back near Jerome. When he’d looked over, Jerome was pulling off his glasses to rub his eyes while Hurk continued to yell. Rook had gotten the general gist even only sort of paying attention – vices were forbidden, and most things were vices.

So for a man who decried most substances with yet more venom for the addictive ones, Rook had reason to believe Joseph was more than a little attached to caffeine. Coffee, specifically.

But not good coffee. Jacob liked good coffee in the morning; there was one of those little camp stoves in the kitchen that Rook had seen people laud as the best way to do something mysterious with brewing, and Jacob seemed to genuinely enjoy the coffee he made with it, or any sort of well-made food. He also didn’t really give a shit about any vice that didn’t hinder productivity, but Rook had expected Joseph to be stricter. There was a tin of instant coffee in the cupboard steadily going down, though, that looked lowest after Joseph spent a night bent over the desk in his living room, the nights the light under his door didn’t go out. Joseph the preacher, writing sermons into the night with cheap, black coffee and religious mania, sleeves rolled up. It was a mental image Rook almost found endearing because it felt like a glimpse at a man Joseph might have been before all this, something not quite wholesome but not quite anything else. Ultimately, Rook was trained to observe so in the end he decided to find it useful.

It was why Rook stood outside Joseph’s bedroom door with instant coffee early the next morning, the slightly bitter smell of it wafting up towards him. He was holding the mug with his hand wrapped around it so that Joseph could use the handle and (what was he doing) he could  _do this_. The warmth of it seeped out from the plain white porcelain and he lifted his hand up to knock. Lowered it before he could.

The coffee was hot. Joseph might like that, or he could throw it in his face. He’d gouged a man’s eyes out with his bare hands, Rook had seen the fucking video. Then again, he needed both hands for that and honestly, Rook could throw it in his face in that scenario. Should he have added sugar? But he hadn’t noticed the milk going down at a proportionate rate to the coffee, and he was the only one who seemed to touch the sugar bowl. Even then, Jacob had taken it away when he’d seen how many Rook used and then he’d carried it off somewhere, so Joseph had to be used to going without by now.

Rook lifted his hand.

Lowered it again. Looked back down the hallway to make sure Jacob wasn’t doing something typically Jacob, like watching and judging him, smirking.

Peaches was – she’d following him to the doorway and then decided that was a good place to lie down, enough to sate her curiosity without needing to wake up fully. But Jacob hadn’t made an appearance that day and Rook had walked Boomer alone, so in the end he bit the bullet ( _rat-tat-tat_ ) and knocked.

After a full minute, he knocked again.

He cast a look at Peaches. “You’d tell me if he’d left, wouldn’t you?” he whispered, and Peaches yawned at him. He looked back to the door and was about to knock again when it swung open.

The air left him like he’d been punched. Joseph looked at him and it was the first time Rook had ever seen him without the fucking glasses and his eyes were so fucking blue. He blinked at Rook slowly and Rook just took in how his hair was down and softened him, pushed back from his face but still long, rumpled from sleep. Oh fuck, Rook thought helplessly, because it had taken him that long to even notice Joseph wasn’t wearing a shirt, he was all tanned skin and marks and sleepy fucking eyes and fuck, shit, fucking  _hell_  were those track pants because they looked soft, they were –

“Yes?” Joseph asked, voice a little thick from sleep and accent thicker with it, molasses.

Rook cleared his own throat quickly. “I.” He looked down at the coffee, saw his knuckles were white around it and quickly released the tension before he shattered the mug. “I brought you. This.” His voice was coming out too deep, but he could blame that on just waking up. He’d been up for hours but no one needed to know that, Peaches wasn’t a fucking snitch.

Joseph looked down at the mug, leaned on the doorframe. “You brought me coffee,” he said, impossible to read.

“I wasn’t sure if you liked sugar,” Rook said. “But Jacob hid it anyway.”

“After you had five, I remember,” Joseph replied.

“It was four,” but he’d wanted five and he was a grown-ass man,  _Jacob_ , “and I wanted to. After before, I wanted to talk.” Joseph continued looking at the coffee, a little bit drowsy and everything blurred around him where Rook’s peripheral vision was going out, like he was the only thing in focus.

Fuck, his eyes were blue. Still eerie-light and unflinching, the whole fucking sea sitting in a person.

Joseph reached out and took the mug from him by the handle, fingers brushing Rook’s and Rook didn’t flinch because he had to  _talk_  to Joseph and offending him wasn’t the way to start. “Come in,” Joseph said, turning and taking a long, casual sip of very nearly boiling black coffee without so much as a wince. “You’ll excuse me if I sit.” Southern manners and Joseph, crossing to sit on the end of a double bed, denting the crisp white duvet cover. Rook glanced around but the room was similar to his – there were a few photos on the desk and nothing else obviously personal. A shot of a white church he didn’t recognise, a polaroid of Faith (Jessop) tucked into a frame holding a picture of the three brothers. Booked stacked on a small desk and a door that must have led to an ensuite, tactfully closed. Bright and white and airy, the sweetness from the garden coming in from the open window.

And Joseph Seed, sitting on the end of that bed with both hands wrapped around his mug and those sea-blue eyes starting to wake up, watching Rook through the steam.

Rook hovered in the doorway. It felt strange to go sit by the desk, where Joseph did his work. It felt wrong to try and sit on Joseph’s bed (his bed  _his bed_ ) and he didn’t want the door open because then there was no privacy, there was an unguarded exit at his back. An exit, though, so he didn’t want to close it either.

He did, in the end. Some things were for saying, even to himself. He turned back and the room felt impossibly smaller with it closed so he leaned against it while he steeled himself. Looked at the spot between Joseph’s eyes to avoid eye contact without making it obvious, a trick he’d picked up to avoid faces full of pity. “I’m sorry,” Rook said, recited what he’d agreed with himself while he waited for the kettle to boil. “For what I said before. I was upset for other reasons, and I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

Joseph knew tricks too – he tilted his head, forced real eye contact as he sipped his coffee again. “Because John locked the faithful up, like we did you,” he said.

Rook had already opened his mouth to apologise again, to offer something else, but the words died in his throat, killed there.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, because it was Joseph (so good at killing things).

“Tell me,” Joseph said. It wasn’t a request. Rook had closed the door himself.

Rook licked his lips, felt how dry they were getting. “I’ve been getting used to things,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard. I don’t like,” the way Joseph was looking at him, waiting like he was something to wait for, to watch, “cages. People in cages.”

“You used to arrest people,” Joseph pointed out, and Rook realised his lips were quirked. Making fun of him, just a little.

“That’s for a reason,” Rook said, shaking his head. “And there are rules, there are structures. It’s not just…” He averted his eyes, broke the eye contact because he couldn’t, he couldn’t say it while Joseph was just  _looking_  at him. “Trapped. Waiting. And don’t,” he added, raising a hand before Joseph could speak. “I know it’s not the same. But you don’t know how it…”

Don’t talk about the nightmares became Rook didn’t talk about the nightmares, became Rook looking at the floor instead of Joseph with the words already dead in his throat, murdered there.

“Anyway,” he said, once the silence passed, once he could speak again. “I’m sorry.”

Joseph studied him for a moment longer. “I forgive you,” he said.

Rook blinked (lurched) and then cleared his throat again, debris of dead words caught in it. “Okay. Good.” Eyed Joseph. “Just like that?”

Joseph smiled. Preacher, the Father, words rolling off his tongue with a sermon’s cadence. “Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive,” he said, he slowed, he paused for effect, “and you will be forgiven.”

 _Should I forgive you now_ , Rook almost asked him, but he didn’t want to know. He had too much of Joseph already, more than he knew what to do with and a sinking, struggling feeling that there was so much more left. “…Okay” he said again, and Joseph drained the last of his coffee, set the empty mug down by his feet. He lifted his hands and held them out to him, like Rook was coming with cuffs again (dogs on chains outside). Rook wavered while Joseph waited, he weighed his options and in the end he took a step forward, and then another, until Joseph beckoned him down with just a twitch of his long fingers and reached up while Rook bent down, cupped his face the way he liked to because there were so many different ways to apologise.

Joseph looked at him. “You were upset that morning,” he said. “Before John.”

Rook blinked, kept his eyes lowered from Joseph’s, so blue and where ships sank (never seen again). “No, I wasn’t,” he said. Mouth suddenly dry.

Joseph sighed; a patient, fond thing. Pulled him in brow to brow and Rook could feel the air on his face when Joseph breathed slowly. Rook swallowed.

“You want so badly what you already have,” Joseph said, a threat in it. Not because he meant it as one but because it was to Rook, the tide in Joseph coming in (coming for him) and him a goldfish again, not a shark in sight. “You already know.”

He did. He did know. He’d seen Joseph’s eyes go dark, felt Jacob’s hands tighten, heard the strain in John’s voice.

He knew.

Joseph inhaled (took the air _Rook’s air_ ) and the side of his nose nudged the side of Rook’s, Rook knew he could close that gap of barely centimetres by barely trying, their lips almost brushing already. So close it could have been an accident, he could have called it that. But,

he knew that wanting wasn’t anything like having,

so he didn’t.

“Please,” Rook whispered (cracking), and Joseph’s fingers curled in, dug in in what could have been a spasm before he let him go. Rook took two steps quickly back when Joseph stood. Joseph smiled tightly. He pulled out his phone but left the distance and Rook eyed the tension in his shoulders because Joseph always got what he wanted.

“I did want to ask you something,” Joseph remarked when Rook reached for the doorknob, flicking through screens in short, sharp motions. “Since there should be trust between us. All of us,” and Rook heard _danger._

“You called someone,” Joseph said, showing the phone, showing a string of digits to him. “Who is this?” and he watched Rook’s face while Rook read the number.

Rook’s mouth tasted like ash. “How did you get this?” he asked and his voice didn’t come out as a rasp when it felt like it should have.

“Trust has to be earned,” Joseph told him calmly but his eyes were calculating, Joseph who always got what he wanted. “Who is this?”

The numbers blurred in front of him. He wanted to take it away, he wanted Joseph to not have it, he wanted Joseph to have  _never_  had it because cults weren’t supposed to be  _good_  at technology, he’d thought it over and over, but,

“Rook,” Joseph prompted, the Shepherd with an errant sheep. “The number.”

Rook swallowed. Tried to control his face and couldn’t, he  _couldn’t_. “It’s my mother,” pulled out of him painfully that wasn’t  _for_  Joseph, that was outside of Hope County and that life was just Rook’s, had always been just Rook’s. “I’m an only child. She just has me.”

Had, he corrected, and felt like he was losing something. Something for nothing.

Joseph breathed out, “ah,” satisfied. He turned the phone screen off, put the phone in his pocket. “You must miss her.”

Rook tried to smile but he could feel it sit lopsided on his face, half of him still paralysed in the face of his old life sitting where it didn’t belong. “I miss missing her,” he said instead of any of that. “We weren’t close.”

“Many parents struggle to connect with Bitten children,” Joseph observed, something like kindness in it. A holy man’s forgiveness, the warmth of God for people who tried their best and failed.

“Yeah,” Rook agreed, and something compelled him to say it before he could think better, dragged out by the undertow, “I can be hard to love,” and that was a threat, that was a warning. The thought in his head that was circling louder-faster the closer the Seeds got, the protective barrier of deficiency in him that would keep him safe from them.

This is too hard, it warned them –  _here there be dragons_ , pejorative and  _his_  at once, Rook who was too big and too quiet all the way down.

Joseph stepped in and reached up immediately, just pressed his palm to Rook’s cheek again like he couldn’t stop himself. “No,” Joseph urged. “We are all children under God, made equal. Deserving of love,” and Rook hadn’t said he didn’t deserve it, hadn’t even said he didn’t  _have_  it but there was no way to describe neatly to Joseph how it didn’t take love away but it put a hesitation first, and extra breath, a blank expression sitting a beat too long before it turned to a smile. Shaped hands that didn’t linger.

He’d been so loved, he didn’t know how to tell Joseph. Just a heartbeat later.

Joseph let his hand fall when Rook didn’t respond, still too tense (his mother on his _screen_ ). He didn’t seem to feel how the air rushed back into the room, the ceiling got a foot higher than it had been seconds ago. How the room had room in it again. “Breakfast?” he asked, gesturing to the door. Rook was so relieved that his stomach, unspooling-unknotting, decided that would work after all and he only hesitated just before he turned the handle.

“Are you,” he asked, carefully careless, “going to get dressed?”

Joseph tilted his head, looked down at himself. Sure, Rook could understand that from a practical standpoint, Joseph wasn’t wearing much less than usual. But his hair was down and his glasses were gone and he could see his feet, fine-boned and vulnerable and it was too many layers too few when Rook had no armour of his own (wasn’t watching through a scope). Had already been upset that morning, before peggies in cages, and Joseph didn’t miss a fucking thing.

“Yes,” Joseph said, and watched him leave.

 

 

-

 

 

Joseph didn’t force him into small talk when Rook sat at the kitchen table in silence, just watching while he made pancakes. Hummed hymns as he flipped them in the pan with a casual wrist motion that reminded Rook of Sunday sprawls in front of the church, usually barbecues but sometimes brunches where paper plates failed to contain pancakes saturated in syrup, made kids sticky before they ran shrieking into the river while music played out of the speakers. Joseph in the middle of it, making fucking pancakes and smiling that benevolent smile, humming. Grace in burning helicopters and Sunday sun alike.

Rook loved pancakes. He was pretty sure Joseph was trying to condition him with them. He preferred it to Jacob’s method, a comment made awkward-uncertainly that had made Joseph laugh.

It was easier than looking for the answers he really wanted. Joseph may have been relaxed but that meant something very different for him – he didn’t unwind, he coalesced, he distilled, the parts made for God and The Father settling into the forefront.

“Any progress on what’s happening to the peggies?” he’d asked Joseph, watching his back move while he stood at the stove, and Joseph hadn’t tensed at all.

“We will find out,” Joseph said, not a trace of doubt in him. Hair pulled back into its bun, yellow glasses on and a shirt, buttoned to the neck. Armour enough for both of them. “It must be resolved before the Collapse. Another of God’s tests, to make sure we are ready.”

“Is Jacob helping John, or is he still here?” Rook asked.

“John is doing his work alone right now,” Joseph replied, sliding another pancake onto the stack next to his elbow. It wasn’t what Rook had asked, and they both pretended not to notice. “Several of his Chosen are still afflicted. He’s chosen to manage it personally.”

Rook wanted to shake him, feel his teeth rattle until answers spilled out. Red peggies the itch at the back of his brain, only ever able to scratch it for split seconds at a time. Instead he reached for his phone, saw a message slide down it in silence and realised he’d left it on mute after he’d spoken to Joseph.

Another arrived while he watched, stove sizzling under Joseph’s watchful eye.

**Missed Call: John (3)**

**John**  
_WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS_

 **John**  
_YOU DEFACED MY PLANE ROOK_

 **John**  
_I’m going to make you refinish that wing with your bare hands YOUR BARE HANDS ROOK_

**Missed Call: John (2)**

**Voicemail: New Message (4)**

had arrived during the night, early that morning when Rook made a point of leaving it on silent, that time belonging to Boomer for his walk and then the time that was Joseph’s. His lips twitched, new messages coming in.

 **John**  
_I thought I’d send you a message back Rook, I hope you like it_

and there was picture of Nick Rye, purple with outrage and mouth open to shout, pointing back at his beloved yellow plane. Last seen in John’s hanger but now returned, his great pride and joy marked in dripping black paint, neatly kerned letters spelling out “DEPUTY SEED” with cartoonish hearts dotted around it down the side.

Something like fishing-line drawn tight around his lungs, that Joseph had breathed in through his mouth when he took his air, snapped. And he tried, he really did. But John Seed was throwing a tantrum and The Father was making him pancakes after bugging his fucking phone while Jacob  _motherfucking_  Seed had what could be a sexuality crisis in the woods, so, “ready,” Joseph said just as Rook made an undignified choking sound. The laugh filled his chest and spilled out until it burst out of him loudly, made Joseph startle and turn away from the stove and then Rook was laughing so hard he was almost doubled over onto the table, deep belly laughs and shoulders shaking with it. He covered his eyes with his hand because  _the look on Rye’s face_  and he could just  _picture_  it, he could just see John hopping out of the plane and throwing the keys at a paralysed Rye, phone already out and sunglasses on, the drama of that long coat as he strode away. And Rye had always been  _such a shit_  about driving his plane down roads even though he knew he wasn’t allowed, cruising along in that bright yellow plane at ten miles an hour down the asphalt. Rook flailed out blindly for support and found Joseph, Joseph had crossed to see his phone and gripped his forearm to keep him steady because Rook kept trying to trail off and catch his breath, but the phone was still fucking open and  _John had graffitied something like a teenager_  and it just started again.

“His face,” he managed, before another fit of what weren’t fucking  _giggles_  escaped. “Keys!”

Joseph huffed out a sort of incredulous laugh in the face of Rook’s hysteria, scrolling down while Rook waved and tried to point at the phone.

“John,” he sighed, reading it. “This was childish,” and Rook buried his face in his arms because nothing else was so it had to be funny.

 

 

 

The pancakes were lukewarm by the time he calmed down enough to eat, Joseph replying to John from Rook’s phone while Rook drowned them in syrup and cut them into tiny squares so they could absorb as much of it as possible. It didn’t feel like violence, like blood and bone before dawn in the grass. It wasn’t what he’d needed that morning but it felt enough like a fight to sit there with Joseph, knowing that he wanted something from Rook that Rook wouldn’t give him, that Rook felt something like appeased. The Joseph at the table, telling off his brother and making Rook pancakes could be true, he knew, but he was also convenient and people feared the frightening, had to find something to love as well and fuck,

Joseph was good,

hair down in the morning and a palm on his face but he’d gone too far, had jarred dissonant because he was patient but a man and Rook was keeping something from him. Joseph who manipulated was easier for Rook to understand, a baseline to revert to. Joseph who tracked his phone was simpler than the Joseph who forgave him as soon as he asked for it (made him  _ask_  for it).

So Rook watched him while the laughter died and the silence grew and in the end, he’d settled enough (not fully) to move on to the next part of what he had to do, which was to find Jacob.

 

 

-

 

 

Jacob was harder to find, but Rook didn’t have the option of ambushing him in his bedroom. Actually, it was impossible – Rook scoured the house, the area around it while Boomer followed him with interest. But Jacob had a greater range of movement and seemed to treat interpersonal avoidance like SERE training. Or he could have been doing something different, off with his responsibilities, but it felt personal. In the end, Rook sat and rubbed the petals of a harebell between his fingers while he texted him.

 **Rook** **  
** _where are you_

and didn’t get a response, just sat there in the quiet until he realised no reply was coming.

“Well, fuck you too,” he muttered when he got tired of it, and shredded the petal between his fingers before he stood. If Jacob wanted to do things this way, he could. He expanded his search to within a mile of the house because he knew the peggies had been doing something by the river, but he found the ruins of a camp instead, pulled down and only traces left. Spent bullet casings buried in the mud, but nothing else. Boomer brought him a knife by the handle that he automatically pocketed and Rook thought of a woman in a storage shed (red around the edges) and an itch his mind hadn’t scratched yet.

He ruffled Boomer’s ears and wandered over there, to the lonely storage shed around the corner of the house from the garden. Through the flowers and the sweet breeze and jimmied the lock to the shed open with the knife. Simple, he reminded himself, because there was no body when he opened the door but there was an arc of dried blood on the far wall, an uneven spray from twin traumas, the rust-red smear from where she must have slid down it and had it pool around her. Patches of it uneven elsewhere, like she’d moved and bled before they’d killed her, had lived longer than she’d wanted to.

Jacob hadn’t come back to the house that night, Rook remembered. Jacob with the blood across his shirt, Joseph who hadn’t come home either. Hadn’t come home until he had, washed blood from his hands and touched Rook’s face with them, made Rook pancakes because he didn’t seem to see the difference, and Rook let the door hang open when he left. To find Jacob and do his part (to be that man) only,

he didn’t find Jacob.

 

 

He did find a long range radio.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rook, you cannot seriously believe that Jacob is not there because he is uncomfortable with the sexuality aspect of this | Joseph does not respond well to being defied in canon and now is no different.
> 
> Chapter title from Two English Poems by Jorge Luis Borges, which I always recommend.


	18. well i have brittle bones it seems

It was a trap. That much was clear.

He found the radio in a cupboard of broken electronics at the back of a shelf, behind a tray just labelled “capacitors”. But it had an easy issue to resolve and Jacob wouldn’t let a frayed set of wires make waste. Even if the cupboard was reserved for what could be gutted for repair parts, it was a dangerous thing to have.

Then again, Rook was dangerous too and they’d given him a bedroom.

It was a trap, but he fixed it and turned it on. Waited until Joseph left and the Father walked down the hill, peggies with rapturous eyes to greet him, and then Rook set up on the staircase. No clear lines of sight from any of the windows to be seen in, but close enough to the front door that he could hear if someone came home (came _back_ , if they came _back_ ).

Eli changed frequencies so often no one could find him. Earl rotated. He couldn’t go general for Dutch, who stuck there and acted as eyes, as bulletin for everyone, because if it wasn’t a trap then he couldn’t get caught. If it was, they’d expect him to make the effort. So he spun the dial until he saw something he knew, remembered trading to when John had talked too long and hit bone.

“Thirsty kind of day, isn’t it?” he asked, and he waited. It was overcast, clouds too light-high for rain but getting there. Not cold, not hot, but Mary May had the best radio within guaranteed range and kept it close to hand. Important, because he couldn’t say it twice without giving it away.

He scratched at the wood grain of the stairs while he waited. The familiarity of listening keeping him at ease instead of what should have been suspense.

After an age, a familiar voice sounded. “Man can always find himself a drink here,” Mary May said cautiously, Montana twang in force.

Rook’s face did something, wobbled – tried to crease. “Mary May,” he said, and her sob of relief came clear through the static.

“Rook! Have they hurt you? I swear to god if those sick sons of bitches have touched a _hair_ on your goddamn head–”

“I’m fine, May,” Rook said through the warmth of her protective, uncomplicated concern. “Are we good to talk, or do we need to change frequency?”

She scoffed. “Please. Half the radios in town can’t even pick us up right now. You’re probably holding the only long-range not under peggie thumb.” For the moment, anyway, but,

his mother’s number on Joseph’s screen, the number he’d dialled alone in a room.

“We can’t assume that,” he tried, but Mary May snapped back with,

“We’ve spent the last few weeks thinkin’ you were hanging off a tree somewhere, I can assume what I damn well _like_.”

“Nothing you don’t want them to know, Mary May,” Rook said, pinching the bridge of his nose. Mary May, that shirt with the lips she wore whenever she fucking wanted (a fight every time) because it was her goddamn bar and her goddamn body and _that’s what you’re for, deputy_.

“I’m not trying to kill them right now, what are they gonna overhear? Something about my sins, tell Jerome on me? Maybe he’ll tell me about an eye for an eye again, give me a talkin’ to.”

Rook smiled, knew it only touched one side of his mouth but getting used to being happy with half instead of none. “Has Jerome been giving sermons again?”

Mary May snorted. “You know I’ve always said Jerome’s a good man,” she said with the worn, familiar path of a frequent disclaimer, “but he can talk a little dry sometimes,”

“And dry just ain’t what bars are for,” Rook finished, a half-hearted attempt at her accent lifting his voice from its deep register. They each laughed to themselves, to each other, to the radios.

“I’m not exactly sure of the protocol here,” Mary May said when it had trailed off. “Is there… If you’re okay, what can I give you? I’ll tell you whatever you need.”

Rook nodded to himself, Boomer’s nails clicking past him on his way down to the water bowl. “You heard the deal,” Rook said. They’d all seen the TV screens, brain rewriting the world as it heard Joseph (then, and not before) the way it seemed to every time he opened his hands and preached. “I’ve been here for weeks. Are things… better?”

Mary May made a stifled sound, not a word but still an answer. _Yes_ , he knew before she said it just a second later. Yes, they were. Rook in a cage and the county safer for it, on more levels than they knew. Guilty about it, because for the enemy to be bad was to let friends be as well, made a comfortable strike to retaliate against. The county doing better kept Rook where he was, because _better_ didn’t have to be _right_ and it didn’t matter if they got what they wanted long enough that they didn’t want to give it back. She explained. “They gave us the fields back, but they’ve held territory around John, the miles of shit they own free and _legal_ ,” a word any backwoods soul could spit like a curse. “And.” She broke off, cursed, then, “they helped us rebuild the free clinic down the road,” she told him, furious. “Jerome ran them off but that fucking _bastard_ John came back, stood over them ‘til it got done.”

Rook’s eyebrows shot up. “That was… nice of him,” he said slowly.

“He said it was a gift from you, don’t tell me that was him talkin’ out his ass. We swept it for bugs and bombs and it was clean, so we thought he might’ve been telling the truth.”

Rook tapped the transceiver. “… What else?” he asked, letting that sink in.

“Well, he gave Rye his plane back,” Mary May said grudgingly, “distributed some food late last week. Not a lot, but enough. Barely gave any attitude about it.”

“But some.”

“Of course some, that smug fucker.”

John was a smug fucker. Rook touched his mouth, tamped the curve down with his fingers.

“What are you gonna do, Dep?” she asked him.

He tapped the transceiver against his chin. “… When did you get the food?” he asked, and she told him, she named the day he’d gotten his phone and asked for something ( _yes_ all-caps on the mountainside) and John had asked him if he missed him.

“May,” he said, “can you update Earl? And see if you can get a hold of Eli. I’ve been on too long already and I don’t have time to check frequencies, but I want to know how everyone is.”

“Want me to see if I can set something up?”

“If you can, but I won’t be back for a while. I’m not going anywhere,” he added, because it wasn’t an open frequency but that didn’t make it closed, “I just don’t want to push it. Over and,”

“Wait, hold on.” Mary May raised her voice. He stopped, receiver still halfway down to the box. “There was something I just. I want to get it off my chest. And you don’t have to say anything or any of that cheesy shit, but… I want to tell you.”

If Mary May was about to tell him she had liked him, John would burn Fall’s End to the fucking _ground_ , new clinic and all. Rook could feel it.

“I talked to Jess,” Mary May said, voice hushed and worse, so much worse. Probably with the radio cord dragged behind the door of the storeroom like she used to with the corded phone during her shift, the loops of it strung straight to get her to a private space on her break. “She told me some things and I don’t know if you… want to talk about it, or if it’s really true, but dep… are you really okay? I mean really. With… all of that?”

The air shook when he opened his mouth, all of it escaping in a rush when he tried to speak. He had to take a few more to get words out.

“… I think I’m going crazy,” he said, he _confessed_ and he had _wrath_ on his heart and _pride_ on his hip and he didn’t believe in confession but something in him wanted out too, something that felt like changing shape right in the sinews. “But things are better,” _better_ not _right_ and the difference made unimportant. Something for nothing for something and Rook’s words carried out where anyone could hear him. “There’s nothing I can do,” and there was just that crackle of a sigh turned static – that noise people made so often around Rook.

“Did I ever tell you about my soulmate, deputy?” she asked, and the line wasn’t secure but he sat on the stairs and she sat, cord stretched tight around the door, and it felt something like private.

He shook his head, then remembered she couldn’t see him, but she seemed to know anyway. “You know I’m not Bitten, but. There are some things that make it hard, right. Things like … like brain injuries. Diseases, when they’re real unwell mentally. You know, yeah?”

Yeah, he knew, and said as much. Had researched it compulsively, eyes dry and searching the bright in the dark when he used the computer after his mom had gone to bed, since she didn’t like him using it after seven p.m. but he had to know, needed any excuse that was better than –

Better. It would have been (something).

“Did you know it’s not just people who’re sick? Or hurt?”

Rook breathed, slowly in-out, and waited for Mary May to continue past the stutter in her throat.

“Because you’re meant to focus, right, you’re meant to really dig down and concentrate so you can dream properly, see them. But that’s much harder for some people, like when you’ve got somethin’ going on with your attention span, or something terrible you’re thinkin’ of instead, so. My soulmate, she – I must’ve told you, before, that she’s a girl – she had these nightmares, and she just couldn’t stop it, she didn’t even know that I was a real person, couldn’t tell I was her soulmate. So I kept,” the click of Mary May swallowing, a jagged shape to her voice, “I kept tryin’ to help, but she couldn’t see me because she just. She was so scared, she was so _scared_ just all the time and I kept at it but then she started thinking that I was just another one of those nightmares, she got scared of me, “

“Mary May,” he said because _not open_ wasn’t _closed_ and she didn’t have to, she didn’t have to give him this because he was the one who gave something for them and getting something _back_ made it feel like he’d sold instead of given, made it cheap the way it hadn’t been when it was free. But she just kept going, a little louder.

“and I think she got sick, because she got … weird, she started turnin’ into shapes and talking about real… just real strange things, and then she was just screaming all the time, she kept coming at me like she was going to tear me to shreds and then I couldn’t take it anymore, and I went to the doctor up in Missoula and he told me I didn’t have to dream anymore but then she couldn’t see me either, that was the trade-off if I wanted to take something for it.”

Little white pills, bitter and coated for slow release and Rook, coming off a high and sitting in a chair too small for him – _this doesn’t have to be your life_ and they never fucking got it, did they, that it already fucking was. Brand-name-better, all the way down.

“I don’t even know her name,” Mary May whispered. “I just left her there. And you know what the thing is? The really sick fuckin’ thing?”

Rook let the transceiver rest on his leg. His hand was trembling, just enough.

“All I felt was _relief_ ,” Mary May told him, a spine in her softened voice made of something hard and silvered. “And I take my fucking pills because sometimes _soulmate_ means they get a free pass to the soft in you but guess what, they’ve gotta earn it the same as everyone else. Or they stick the knife in and they don’t give a shit because they didn’t have to give anything to get it. They don’t have to _mean_ it to hurt you. Do you get that?”

Rook did. He got that, he got that better than anyone who could have (would have) been listening. Hammering at a wall built because he hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t been needed. Nothing personal but Not You, No Thanks. “Yes,” he said simply.

“Good.” They each took a second before she took over, voice stronger. “I’ll see what I can do. About Eli, and the Sheriff, I’ll get as much as I can. You just… think about what I said.”

“I will. Be safe,” he said.

“Call it… three days. Eli’s a squirrelly one.”

Rook shrugged at Boomer, sitting and dozing at the foot of the stairs and as good a proxy as any. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Good. Oh, try to look after yourself. There’s a nasty bug going around, I think the peggies brought it with them. Carl’s caught it but he’s a fuckin’ idiot, you should be fine.  Mary May, over and out.”

Rook nodded,

_a nasty bug,_

and blanched, gripped the radio convulse-tight, “what did you say?!” he demanded urgently. “Mary May, come back!”

Static.

“Mary May, come in!”

Boomer lifted his head, proxy activating when the person didn’t, and the radio dug into Rook’s hand.

Red peggies and Carl, the idiot who lost a finger to a dare and a ride-on mower, who’d married his soulmate at sixteen (wasn’t _Bitten_ ) and it was nothing,

it would be nothing,

it would be Carl with only nine fingers and no fucking idea what he couldn’t eat in the woods. It would be nothing, and in three days Mary May would come back and tell him so.

Three days.

“Three days,” he said out loud because what was the nasty bug, was it really _contagious_ because John had said it wasn’t working like that. He swallowed. “Three days,” he said again. Picked up the radio and took it back to the cupboard, stored it exactly where he’d found it with stiff, mechanical movements. Partially unscrewed the back, just like it had been before, tucked everything in front of it for three days.

 

 

Jacob still hadn’t replied, he still hadn’t found him, he remembered only when he wondered what to do with himself for the afternoon (for three _fucking_ days) and checked his phone. He was still a loose end to tie up. Rook tried out _i’m sorry if before i_ and deleted it because it felt wrong and he wasn’t fucking sorry, he wasn’t turned belly-up for a knife and Mary May had told him so. He’d broken Jacob’s fucking nose and killed his fucking hunters and he wasn’t going to beg, he didn’t have to lie ( _does the wolf apologise_ crooned on the radio) so in the end he wrote,

 **Rook**  
_didn’t peg you for a coward_

and sent it.

 

 

He didn’t get a response to that either.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook vetoed staring into space, looking for Jacob, went to the yard the next morning and decided he’d build a wall instead. Give a try himself, see how much fun it really was (everyone else seemed to like it). Not because the garden needed one – the flowers were beautiful sprawled out in sort-of rows and dotted with other, brighter blooms here and there. That calculated kind of charm and something he sort of liked – he could admit that – but fuck it. He’d build a little wall for the few weak little vines to cling to, something dead easy out of the spare lumber. A wall? A trellis. Would probably ruin the overflowing-meadow thing it had going, the garden of Eden that Joseph dragged out of the ground everywhere he went but hey,

that was a good thought too (put a wall in you, _asshole_ ),

and he found a toolkit pretty easily so he decided just to do it.

 _If all you’ve got is a hammer_ , Rook thought when he couldn’t find any fucking nails, but did remember to get some gloves.

 

 

He held a peggie to ransom for them, in the end. Some teen boy who quaked in the face of Rook (all that Rook) and pointed him to perfectly organised little plastic tubs full of screws, nails, different kinds of drill bits.

Rook knew what drill bits got used for in the Project. He shoved them to the back out of spite.

 

 

It was still overcast when afternoon rolled around. The clouds, the air getting heavier but not willing to commit yet, too high up and indistinct - gradient-grey instead of darkening, enough that he didn’t feel sunburnt and the sweat, the muscle tightness were just from hard work and not from the sun. He’d put together something that Whitehorse would have said had character (and Staci would have said was ugly) after an hour or so, after dragging the wood to the yard and making it all roughly the right lengths first. But then he’d hit the side of his hand with the hammer (too used to hitting people) and the hawkweed was coming back, so he ended up crouched in the grass pulling weeds out again. There was always more of it to go, cropping up where it shouldn’t have and so ready to replace itself.

Just like peggies, he thought, and laughed at his own joke. Boomer came around to help and quickly worked out that Rook was taking the uprooted weeds around to the green bin, started ferrying them back and forth (National Champ) and rolling enthusiastically in the upturned dirt they left behind. Working with him and so proud of himself, making Rook’s whole chest warm. “Who’s my good boy?” he crooned at him when Boomer got a face full of pollen and started sneezing uncontrollably, taking advantage of the distraction to scrunch his hands over his fur. “ _You_ are, and you’re absolutely filthy,” in that same loving tone because Boomer was too smart, really, and didn’t love baths, “you’re going to the hose when we’re done.” Maybe with a detour past Jacob’s room, and he let Boomer go to make another trip to the bin for him.

They settled into a rhythm with it. Working together again, both of them satisfied with that kind of synergy and settled, the kind of work that muscle memory could do without the brain needing to supervise. Until Boomer started barking, high and frantic and _it’s been so long_ for a face he knew, and Rook wiped his forehead, little weed-digger in his other hand, and he prepared for Joseph.

“Strong men holding their tools – I think one of my assistants had that calendar.”

Rook froze in his crouch, ice slipshivering up his spine.

John’s smile was bright-white all the way down the grassy path towards him and it was like Rook had walked through bliss again, that bending air before pain because everything about John was so fucking _clear_ , distinct, danger colours catching in Rook’s hindbrain. Sunglasses and his dark beard making that knife-slice-smile brighter, all of him slick and new and just like Rook’s phone (too expensive for him). Little details that were blurred on video chat seemed too hard on him now, the clear letters on his fingers before he stuck them into his pockets, strode up to Rook and cocked his head to look down at him.

Rook let himself swallow, squinting to see him where the sun was making it hurt – shaded his eyes and it wasn’t the sun at all (after all). “John,” he said, a bit of a rasp because he hadn’t spoken much that day. “What are you doing here?”

John, delighted-delighting, all that charisma wielded like a weapon and there to make you think you were the only one in the room, the only one worth mocking. “I need to speak to Joseph. And I knew you’d be missing me, _deputy_.”

Rook stood up, back cracking as he straightened. “You could call him. You have a phone.”

“I have a plane too,” John pointed out. Sauntered into Rook’s space like he owned it and reached up, rubbed at Rook’s cheek with a frown. “How did you even get it on your face?” he wondered. Rook tugged his gloves off, left them in the grass and flexed his fingers rid of that wrinkled, sweat-tacked feeling that gloves and hard work made. John reached up and smudged at him again and he was calculating, Rook only saw when he pushed his sunglasses up with his other hand, looked at the dirt on his fingers. “Interesting,” he said, and flicked those fingers at him.

“Joseph’s not here.”

“Then I’ll have to _wait_ , won’t I? I’ll be in the house. Come in when you’re less of a trainwreck.”

“That’s what the mud room’s for,” Rook said.

John leaned closer. “That’s what _followers_ are for,” he confided in a faux-whisper, and with that confident smile he turned around and walked back to the house. The drama of that long coat behind him, carried off on his long legs.

Interesting, Rook wondered,

 _his face_ , he realised. John didn’t touch his face, had gone for it once while Rook was sedated and then it was Joseph, always. But Rook hadn’t leaned away because Joseph-always meant Joseph- _allthefuckingtime_ , had let it pass without comment.

“I think my face just became common property,” he said to Boomer, who looked delighted for him. “Hose for you,” Rook reminded him sourly, and he’d fucked up there too because Boomer bolted without hesitation, made Rook sprint after him right down the hill.

 

 

-

 

 

Two. Hours. It took him _two hours_ to catch and wash Boomer, to get himself into the mud room and change into the too-short spare pants left in there. The ones he’d been wearing had a chance of survival – a slim chance, but the shirt was a lost cause and his boots had mud all down the inside. He had to wash them out, dry them carefully and left them with the tongues pulled out as far as he could to let them dry the rest of the way and then he peered out, feeling shy for the first time because he knew ( _he knew_ ) that there was at least one Seed in the house and they thought boundaries happened to other people. Something truer than they knew, hurt-true in present tense.

Coast clear, he opened the door wider so Boomer could get in as well, padded quietly down the hallway to get to the stairs. He got to the foot of them before,

“Well,” said a needle sharply, said John. Rook’s hand flew up over _WRATH_ automatically but _PRIDE_ was a lost cause, John speaking from the living room at exactly the wrong angle. He turned his head, body turned defensively away. John stood up from the couch and he’d taken off his sunglasses, his coat, he’d rolled his sleeves up and there was Latin inked on one side of his chest that Rook couldn’t make out.

John’s eyes gleamed. “This is a surprise,” he said, false-gracious. “And what took you so long?”

“Nothing. Going to get dressed,” Rook said, and John dragged his eyes over him. Not the normal way, like the eyes had to be led by the brain attached but _dragged_ , something physical down and down and down, so much of Rook there and _look, don’t touch_ had never been a clear enough distinction for John.

“What would Joseph say?” John asked. Rook didn’t answer and something in John’s expression changed, he stepped closer. “What would Joseph say,” he repeated, and English let the same sentence sound very different.

Rook shrugged, kept his hand where it was and that prompted John to take another step, to see his hand, and then all of him narrowed in on Rook at once. “Let me see it,” he demanded, advancing until Rook was almost crowded against the bannister. Lit by sudden mania, that possessive light that never went out (never slowed down).

“You saw it,” Rook gritted out, hunched a little to create distance. “When you _tattooed_ me.”

John made a noise that Rook had never heard outside a bedroom, low and satisfied. “I did,” he agreed, eyes dark. “But now I want to _see_ it.”

Rook didn’t growl, but it was close. Breathed out slow instead and sidestepped past John’s shoulder to bypass him entirely and froze when John didn’t take this petulantly like any other bully trying to corner someone. He leaned in instead, tilted his head into where Rook was stretched out around him, where he’d gone statue-still at the feeling of John suddenly almost pressed to him down his front.

His wrist moved. Rook glanced down at just saw John’s hair, realised after a second John had just taken the initiative to peer down in the gap where his fingers cupped over his heart, pulled it away from his skin with two fingers hooked into his to make it work.

“Let go of me,” Rook said.

“No,” John answered easily, pulling it a little further to see, staying with him when Rook moved to follow it and before he knew it they were on the threshold to the living room – John the kind of kid who had to learn ballroom dance, knew exactly how to lead a step. “It looks good, neat work,” John observed. _His_ work, the egotistical shit and the pride in his voice. “Even though you took the wrapping off in the woods, like a savage.”

“Let. Go of me,” Rook repeated, voice tight.

“Or what?” John asked, taking another step and the back of Rook’s knees hit the couch, he sat down automatically. John leaned in, used the change of height to tilt his head up until his nose brushed Rook’s jaw where it would have been hard to reach before, letting go of his fingers to splay his hand over the bare base of Rook’s throat. Rook twitched. “Oh, let me guess – you’ll hurt me. You think I can’t take pain, _Rook_?”

Rook flinched because he _didn’t_ , he could see Needles pacing-screaming in his dreams and John who could smile afterwards, took knives to other people and just kept going. “I don’t like this,” he said tightly and John braced his hand on the back of the couch by his head and breathed deeply, Rook could feel it against his pulse-point and the goosebumps rippling out from it. Nerves waking up like lying in the field that hadn’t been, someone being gentle to him. “What are you trying to do, John?”

John pulled back enough to look at him, that low (that bedroom-hum) kind of look on his face. “Is that the question,” he asked, and he shoved Rook back by the shoulders, climbed onto the couch to straddle him with a knee on either side of his hips. Rook jolted (his heart fucking stopped) and John shushed him, put his hand back on his collarbone and pushed him back. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he said, smiling with too many teeth, leaning in from where his weight was anchored on Rook’s lap. “Tell me, Rook.” Voice dropping low and something hard-sharp-hurting, “Joseph touches you,” anger right against his jaw, where Rook’s heart was racing there, “ _Jacob_ touches you and I saw, I _saw_ what he did to you, and I – well, I left my mark on you but you don’t even _look_ at me.”

“Fuck,” Rook spat and John’s fingers twitched, the arm pressed to the couch beside him tensed and everywhere he looked there was John. “It’s not. It’s not the _same_ ,”

“ _How_?” John demanded.

“Do you want me to treat you like I treat Jacob?” Rook asked, it came out in a growl because he could feel himself getting wild around the eyes. “Because I can,” and his hands closed on John’s hips, no one ever did walk the same after a crushed pelvis and John was right there, he was muscle moving under tailored pants under Rook’s hands _right there_ ,

and John leaned in and closed the rest of the world off, stream-blue eyes (blue-blue- _blue_ ), “I want you to treat me how you _want_ ,” he hissed and Rook’s lip curled, he couldn’t understand why that struck right through out through John’s hands to crack in his chest. Why it sank down in him, cold-hurt and spilling out. Rook listened, and he heard,

I want you,

he heard,

I want you to want me,

 

(and his ribcage yawned open inside him, flooded sour with bile and calcium-bitter broken bones from struggling and struggling and,

_why don’t they want me_

the question he hadn’t asked the counsellor, the doctor in his office either time, had wanted so much without ever knowing what)

 

and that wounded keen had come from _him_ , that animal noise that said _I hurt_ and _help_ right into John’s air where he was so close and John was making soothing sounds when Rook could finally hear it through the echoing, hands running through Rook’s hair because somewhere along the line he’d started fucking shaking. “I’m sorry,” John was murmuring over and over, uncertain hands moving over his hair, his shoulders, the sides of his face like he didn’t know where to put them. Forehead pressed to his while he tried to press Rook back into the right shape, still shaking and colours leaking out of the lines, and “I’m sorry,” the most frightening words John could say because it meant Rook was someone to be sorry to and Rook didn’t know where to put his hands either. Settled on the sides of John’s neck and he could feel his heart hammering against the skin there like his was and he pressed his face harder against John’s just to feel him press back – understood that animal urge a little more, “I’m sorry,” and Rook holding on while John touched him like he wasn’t sure he was doing it right.

“You _left_ me,” Rook said, and he _hated_ himself, he’d hurled that at Jacob like a weapon (safety _off_ ) and Jacob had come back and then he’d fucking _left_ again, all his life was _left_ but John touched his lips to the corner of Rook’s, tried to soothe him still because he was a smug fucker and a total fucking disaster, had no idea what to do with Rook when Rook didn’t know what to do with himself, so

“I did,” John whispered, he wavered against the skin there and tattooed him again, again, “I did,” and Rook tilted his head to chase him when he pulled away, slid his hands around the back of John’s head and pulled him in to seal their mouths together because he couldn’t let him _leave_.

John locked up (locked in) and Rook felt it, felt John’s lips unmoving under his and felt him tense up his back, straight up his neck under Rook’s palms. Rook almost dragged him in further and he knew then, he knew Joseph’s hands digging in because his did, too, just before he slackened his grip (not-wanted, not- _looked-for_ ) and he pulled back (not- _for-_ you) because he’d started thinking he owned John instead of the other way around. He broke away and swallowed, his throat felt like it was closing when John made a sound like he’d been cracked open and crashed back into him.

Rook keened animal-hurt, surged up to meet him and then John gripped his hair, dragged his head back and took his mouth, teeth and heat and that mania catching, ripping down in Rook over and over because John was making sounds like he couldn’t help it, barely pulled away to inhale before he was back and touching Rook’s hair, his chest, knees gripping tight at his hips and all of him clinging to Rook. Rook’s lungs were burning, John was burning up and taking the air out but when he broke away, gasped in a breath, John scraped his teeth over his neck and there just wasn’t any for him, his chest heaved but he was light-headed and starving. “John,” he managed and John _groaned_ , a sound dragged out raw and bled all the way up – he dragged his lips up to his ear (beard softer than he’d thought) and ground down with his hips where _fuck_ they were both hard, rocked against him like it hurt and,

“Tell me what you want,” John begged, breath hot on Rook’s ear before the sting as he caught in between his teeth. “Tell me, _tell_ me and I’ll give it to you, anything, I’ll make it so _good_ for you if you just _say_ it,”

(say _yes_ )

and it was all Rook could get out, _yes_ and John twisted like flame, _yes_ made John frantic with it (Needles _screaming_ ) and Rook said _John_ helplessly because there was too much and this wasn’t _for_ him, he was splitting down the middle where John’s nails dragged down Rook’s chest, at that cracked-open noise when Rook said his name. Nails down down while Rook tried to get his stupid bold-blue shirt off, couldn’t work the buttons with shaking fingers and John in motion, hand making for his waistband until Rook tore at the shirt in sheer frustration, one button caught and refusing to come out. John hissed at the drag on his skin, breathless and high and spiralling and he was on him again before Rook could get the fiddly fucker open, dragged his mouth open with his thumb to lick inside and pulled Rook’s hand underneath to where his stomach flexed at the contact, skin bare-hot against his palm.

“Tell me,” John blue-blue-blue and everywhere and Rook couldn’t, he couldn’t pull away because it felt like he had something, he couldn’t say ( _you can’t leave me **don’t leave me**_ ) because there was a wall in him that meant he’d never been there in the first place. He dragged John back down where he had arched up instead, dragged his hips back down to his and thrust up, sank his teeth in John’s neck when he threw his head back and moaned, sank his teeth down until he could taste blood and John had settled into rhythm against him hard-wanting, tension building low in Rook’s abdomen and,

A horn beeping outside, the sound of a car door slamming.

Rook froze. John snarled and he was _livid_ , temper twisted his mouth before he dragged his hands through Rook’s hair again, and then again, like he was the one being calmed by it. “Okay,” he bit out, pressed a hard kiss to Rook’s temple, just lips sealed over teeth gritted together. “Okay,” he repeated, whole body tense-shuddering for a long moment he pulled back, left Rook’s skin prickling from the temperature shift. The sudden cold. “I,” John said, cut-clear, “am going to have this fucking meeting and _you_ ,” hand pressed to (stained in) _wrath_ , “are not going to run into the fucking woods, understood?” Like he could shove it into Rook’s chest, pushing in where his heart was still pounding. Rook swayed into it, towards John’s mouth and towards warm, towards body-warm under his hands and breath he could fill himself with and John shoved him back against the couch, shuddering again. “Understood?” he asked hoarsely.

Rook nodded, mouth hot and bruised and _you can’t leave me_ looking up, John’s hands shaking on his shirt while he took deep, deep breaths. He slid one knee off the couch, then the other, adjusted himself in his pants and tried to button up his shirt but Rook was pretty sure the lowest one had pinged off towards the bookshelf. He watched and John looked up, mouth half-open to ask a question and then he stopped, eyes wide and too lovely in John Seed’s face, pure and blue and he leaned in when Rook leaned forward to stand. Searched his face and start-stopped another word, lowered his eyelids and hesitated, looked into his eyes before he pressed a kiss soft and shy to the corner of Rook’s mouth again while Rook closed his eyes and let him. “… Oh,” John said, a little softly, a little wretched, and he cleared his throat when he pulled away.

“You should go upstairs,” he said, pulled at Rook’s arm and stepped back quickly when Rook stood. “I’ll… there’s a bathroom down here - what would _Joseph_ think,” he added, dry self-deprecating because he was rallying, pulled John Seed back on while Rook watched, saw it in the way he gestured to the stairs and it was starting to be graceful again. Rook looked at the stairs, looked at him and felt like he was underwater, like a shock grenade had gone off while he slept and violence was following when he walked up the stairs – he couldn’t make it to his room, he got to the bathroom and had to grab at the sink to keep himself up once the door was closed.

The mirror watched him silently. His hair was sticking up, he looked like he’d been fucking mauled and there were bruises dotted over his tattoo, fingertips pressing through to ribs. He stared, touched his chest experimentally and sucked a pained breath in. He spun the tap on (two inches to drown) and splashed his face with cold water, rubbed at his skin like he was using an eraser, felt

I’m sorry,

And

I did,

and things Rook didn’t want to hear but had once, had thought he could buy with pain and silence.

“Fuck,” and he twisted the tap off, water dripping from his face down his neck. He had to ( _don’t run_ ) go, he had to get ( _away_ ) distance because he was ( _Bitten_ not­- _looked_ -for) not going to do this, he _couldn’t_ ,

he was never going to _have_ this because Rook was build hard to love, too big to want so deeply and he knew that, he _knew_ that about himself and knowing that made it okay, was enough to make it _enough_ because he wasn’t going to get _better_ – all he could do was to own it, to stare down weakness without flinching.

John flayed people and Jacob had –                       

Joseph had –

– they weren’t _good_ , they weren’t bright-noise-light and they’d take something for nothing if they could, had gotten Rook for less and being beautiful, being bold-broken and wanting didn’t make that _better_ (not the same as _right_ ).

He had to,

He had to,

He had to get a fucking _shirt_ on because John had left a long set of scratches down from his collarbone, bruised him and the bathroom was tiled and cold. Rook felt cold, shaky like he’d run too far too fast and he closed his eyes, let himself sit in the dark of his eyelids while his brain adjusted to reality. He had to put a shirt on and he had to do something, he had to sit and curl up until his thoughts were the right shape and the hue seeping out of him was cool again, nothing red or warm or bleeding.

He could do that. Rook knew how to do that.

He opened the door and a camera shutter went off, broke the silence like a gunshot.

Fucking _John_ sent shock the way of rage and Rook was half-snarling when he looked up, only, “good angle for you,” Jacob rumbled, a smirk across exhausted features. The stubble above his usually neat red beard was growing out, there and where the undercut was usually shaved to nothing. There was mud up from his boots to the knees of his pants, fresh scratches down dirt-marked forearms. A worn pack was slung over his shoulder and he waved the phone at him, hollows of his eyes pronounced but gaze sharp ( _coward_ lower-case except where it mattered) and they’d both seen it, Jacob saw the scratches and the bruises and he had smirked before he was already going down the stairs. There and gone in less than a second. Rook stared after him for a while – he had fucking _known_ Jacob wasn’t home – and goddamnit, god fucking _damn_ it because it wasn’t home,

it was _Joseph’s_ home, and Rook just slept there,

because he didn’t know what else to do.

 

 

God.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sure, John. Your assistant had that calendar. Mary May(de for ladies) is my girl, people, and the peggies can listen to her tragic backstory on the shortwave as much as they want because she'll fight anyone who mentions it. Big Dick Energy as seen in Mary May. 
> 
> Chapter title from Candles by Daughter, and yeah I run on themes so that's the band we're living in right now.


	19. embedded in the frost, so leave me

 

People tended to think Rook was stupid. _Gentle giant_ rolled off the tongue so easily that there was no pause between words, no space for another adjective. Because _quiet_ was taken for _gentle_ , the one-two descriptor that didn’t keep Rook in frame because nothing really did, cut out the gun held easy in his hand and a broken-bottle lesson years ago. He was the right shape to be stupid, some unwritten law had decided once he hit six feet and just kept going. It was hurtful as a teen who had already known rejection, and annoying as a student trying to prove himself – convenient, in the end, as a deputy. He could let people think they’d outsmarted him, he just listened while they tried to run in circles around him and spun enough rope to hang themselves and they always looked at him, bloodless, when they realised and his smile spread, slow and satisfied.

No. Rook wasn’t stupid.

But fuck, sometimes he wanted to be.

The smart thing to do would be to refuse to lose ground. If he retreated, he’d make himself vulnerable by cutting off his exits, his options – reducing himself to prey. He had to scrounge back some sort of leverage since he’d lost the neutral ground he’d made of himself. He had to calm himself down and not let himself be provoked to action until he understood what he was dealing with. Had to, had to.

What he _wanted_ to do was to sit in his room (behind a door that didn’t lock) until John left, until Jacob walked out into the woods and the fucking Collapse brought it all down around his ears.

Honestly, he was starting to see the appeal.

But no, Rook wasn’t stupid, so he showered until his skin felt raw, then numb, and then he got dressed. Put his boots on and everything just to feel ready, and he walked downstairs for dinner like it was a normal night. Safety on, he told himself, and he made his way down the stairs. He couldn’t hide – he hadn’t done anything _wrong_ , stupid wasn’t _wrong_ – and he couldn’t make way, would have less under him if something else changed. He had to assert, he had to stand firm or the Seeds would scorched-earth-scar everything he left behind. He couldn’t hear anything when he stopped on the lowest step on instinct – head tilted like a doe, a prey animal he hadn’t been in years. Rook rolled his shoulders, made them sink back and down ( _stand up straight_ and fussing hands at his collar) and kept going.

He had to eat. He hadn’t eaten breakfast – not sure how to manage the sight of Joseph – and he’d worked through lunch. He had meant to grab something when he came inside and then,

(he sort of _had_ )

(had to, had to)

he hadn’t gotten anything from the _kitchen_ , fucking hell, so he bypassed the living room ( _tell me_ and how his hands ached empty suddenly) and barely hesitated in the doorway before he opened it.

 

 

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting.

But he didn’t get it.

 

 

“Rook,” Joseph greeted. Sitting alone at the table, the door to the back porch open. Leaning forward on his elbows on the table, looking at some random piece of plastic he was turning. The beads of the rosary clicked on the table. The wind coming in from outside was starting to smell like ozone and earth – not rain yet, slowly making up its mind. “How was your day?”

Rook glanced out the door but couldn’t see John or Jacob nearby out in the grass, through the window to the porch. “Fine,” he said, and skirted around Joseph to the kettle, shifted it to the stove and let the click-flare of the burner fill the room. He looked over his shoulder and Joseph held out his mug, still looking at his other hand, where the thick cord of the rosary twisted around his palm. “Thank you,” he said absently when Rook took it and put it next to the one he pulled out for himself.

“Where are the others?” Rook asked, spooning instant coffee into Joseph’s cup and what the hell, he’d needed the caffeine, deciding to have some himself. He hated having it without sugar – didn’t like bitterness – but he’d give it another shot.

“Speaking to Faith,” Joseph answered. “She will return to the faithful at the Henbane soon – she has been hard to reach. Family is important, it keeps us grounded.”

“She’s not connected like the three of you are,” Rook said, tried so hard to shove down the red-red-rushing, the thought of bliss ripping through him while Faith ran. Kept himself balanced on legs that still worked, that nothing was wrong with anymore. “Must be tough for her.”

“Family is worth any trial,” Joseph said. Rook poured water into the mugs when the kettle whistled, stirred one briefly before placing it next to Joseph’s hand because the psychopath apparently preferred it boiling. “You should stay and eat with us. You haven’t been.”

“Planned on it,” Rook said, stirred milk into his own coffee. “Faith’s frightened of me,” he said offhandedly, “you know that, right.”

“She is,” Joseph agreed, sipping the acid-black coffee. Rook’s tongue felt blistered in sympathy, second-hand scorched. “But she has strength, and faith. She will face you when she is ready, and she will understand the place you have in our family. In God’s plans for us.”

Rook bit the inside of his cheek. “I… would also like to know that,” he said, felt his voice come out a little funny, strangled.

Joseph considered this. “You’re finding it,” he said, turning the plastic in his hand still. Rook glanced at it as he pulled a chair out and sat down – it wasn’t really plastic, he saw. It was a piece of shell, or something ceramic. Small between Joseph’s fingers, and,

one of John’s buttons, Rook realised as Joseph turned it,

because he’d felt it in his own. Had torn it off by tugging at John’s shirt, felt it fly off into the living room.

Rook became conscious of the silence. That his breath and the kettle had postponed, complete now that both had stopped.

Joseph looked up in degrees, like there was something heavy trying to keep his light eyes down. “Do not think I’m angry,” he said softly. His lips twitched, but the centre didn’t hold. “I’m not, I’m glad.” He tilted his head a little. “I am,” he said, a flash of teeth made self-deprecating, “a man,” like it was a failing, a flaw he had to own and confess to.

Rook nodded, meeting that piercing-pale stare and there was something heavy in it after all, something pressing down in him to force his held breath out. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I know that.”

Joseph tapped the button on the table, one-twice. “You do,” he said. “But you don’t understand it yet,” and Rook didn’t know what to say to that so he didn’t say anything. The two of them sat in silence until the porch door swung open, John’s and Jacob’s conversation spilling in with the two of them, Rook suddenly deaf to it because he didn’t know how to process that either, or John’s face (his mouth now that he knew what it tasted like) so he lowered his eyes.

“It doesn’t _matter_ , John–”

“–it matters because you want me to _eat_ it, Jacob, just tell me what kind of animal it is, I don’t understand why you’re being so _difficult_ ,”

and John bent down and kissed the top of Rook’s head on the way past before he threw himself into the chair across from him, as easy as if he did it every day, still bickering with Jacob while Rook’s bones creaked under the weight (under the strain) of that light press and Joseph slipped the button into his pocket.

Rook couldn’t do much but he made sure he looked unaffected when John glanced back at him, so quick he almost missed it. “What are we having?” he asked in the absence of a better idea, and that just launched John right back into it, something unwinding somewhere in his posture, because _apparently_ Jacob had brought back the protein and _apparently_ he wouldn’t say what it was, which was just ridiculous because people were entitled to be assured of _basic food safety_ and also to know what that food was, and another thing, _Jacob_ –

 

 

Jacob did end up cooking, served up the meat of something, barely seared with roasted vegetables on the side and Rook was a carnivore so it bled onto the plate and he honed in on it like his favourite laser sight, he didn’t even care that John trapped one of his feet between his under the table while Joseph got everyone water. Recognised it as venison one bite in and didn’t give it away, because John still didn’t know and didn’t like that. And John displeased was better than the one who kept looking around and gauging their expressions; who wasn’t cagey, wasn’t leering. His eyes were creased. He had dimples because he wasn’t smiling but the colour of it was clinging to his mouth, brightened him. He didn’t send Rook heated looks or pointed ones. He looked…

Happy.

He stole food from Joseph and pretended (badly) to be offended when Jacob jabbed at him with his fork when he tried the same on him, he was just so fucking _pleased_ and Rook had been worried that the other two would take it badly if John let slip, and he shouldn’t have been because Rook had left a bitemark that John’s collar only half-hid and torn a button off his shirt and Joseph just told them about how one of Faith’s girls (not her Angels) had started talking again. So pleased that she was opening up the way she hadn’t since she lost the baby and her boyfriend in the same accident, the one that brought her to them. Mentioned that Faith would join them next time before smiling imperfectly, privately when Jacob stabbed at John again with a glare, dragged his plate a little further away because John _had his own, goddamnit_ when John clearly just wanted the roasted carrots and had already gone through his own, liked to share in general. Which was a whole other train of thought that Rook couldn’t get a handle on _either_ and that made him lose his appetite - staring down the barrel of that particular shotgun, last meal already half-finished.

“Have you found anything new about the red peggies yet?” Rook asked, when John had traded – without asking – his carrots for John’s remaining roast potato.

“Yes,” John said with relish, pointing with his fork like it was a prop. “ _Finally_ —” and Joseph cleared his throat. They both looked at him. Joseph rested his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers, a net of metacarpals in front of his mouth, looked at John.

“… But there’s no need to go over it,” John finished smoothly, looking right back before flicking back to Rook. Subsiding, reshaping, fork a utensil again instead of a prop.

“Well done,” Jacob said under his breath. His voice was rougher than usual and it was irritating to Rook that he didn’t know why. And then _that_ was irritating all on its own, and that cycle never ended so Joseph it was.

Rook looked between them. “What did you find?”

Joseph collected Rook’s empty plate, stacked it on top of his own. “It is in hand, Rook. There’s no need to worry.”

Rook wasn’t the kind of person who _worried_ much. But he did think a lot, spent so much time trapped in his head that he liked to make use of it. He glanced at John, who seemed unphased by this, didn’t give any further sign that there was something to hide. But he was also an ivy-league lawyer and unpredictable in the extreme, dictated by his own whims and the will of Joseph, who’d already spoken.

“You didn’t have a problem telling me before,” he said. “What’s changed?”

“Don’t,” Jacob warned.

Rook didn’t give a shit. “What if one of you gets it? What will you do then? Tell me _something_ , why don’t you want me to know?”

 _What_ don’t you want me to know, he knew as soon as he asked. It was _what_ , because they hadn’t cared before and something was different now. They hadn’t changed – it had to be something else, something outside of them. Something to bring John from the valley, to bring Faith terrified to Rook’s doorstep.

Joseph gave him a patient smile. “I told you – you don’t need to worry, Rook.”

Rook’s face was blank. He could feel that he’d done that much right. “I’m not. But I don’t think your followers would take that well, and I don’t like not being involved with things that might affect me.”

Joseph touched his hand, pushed back from the table and took Jacob’s empty plate, John’s as well. “God will not let this take us,” he said, unshakeable, and took the dishes to the sink. “Not while we still do His work.”

“And what work is that?” Rook asked, louder than he’d meant to because there was a door in the room and they were _closing_ it ( _I saw him but he wasn’t there_ ) and Joseph set his hands on the counter with his back to him, the line of him angular instead of fluid. He didn’t move from there, so

(don’t look, don’t ask, _don’t be that **fool**_ )

Rook looked to John, held by the chronic fucking infection that was hope (festering in him), “or is that not for me either?” he asked, and John only held his gaze for a moment before he dropped it. Left them in the silence because Rook wasn’t even going to bother trying Jacob; if he couldn’t get traction with John then he wouldn’t get anywhere.

Rook tapped his fingers on the table, drummed into the wood and he’d had John’s hips under his hands, felt the kind of ache that was better but not right – he had never been stupid but apparently somewhere along the line he’d decided to give it a go because no one was answering and he’d thought asking would make a difference when he wouldn’t have the day he arrived.

“You’re not going to give me anything, are you,” Rook said. He didn’t ask. He just verbalised for the room at large, said to John, who didn’t even have the fucking decency to react ( _I’ll give it to you, anything_ and Rook, the right shape to be stupid after all) so, “alright,” Rook said, and pushed his chair back from the table with a scrape. “Excuse me,” he added, and walked out.

“Let him go,” he heard Joseph say as the kitchen door closed behind him, and Rook rubbed his fingers together to stop feeling skin curving under them because his mouth had to remember John’s smiling into him,

( _happy_ )

but his hands had enough to deal with.

 

                                                                           

-

 

 

Rook set his alarm for half an hour earlier than usual the next morning, so that he’d be gone by the time Jacob might have thought to wake him. Boomer trotted ahead of him in the fog, navigated easily in the dark while the frost snap-fractured around them – the light of dawning bending it out of shape, breathing into and breaking it down to nothing. Rook kept his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders and watched his breath fog in the air while he wove through the trees.

He’d thought something more had changed than it had, which was on him. He’d thought that John having something, having proof that Rook wanted him – he’d thought that it might have –

                       could have been –

that it might have felt like something, it might have –

– just snap-fracturing that no one else could hear, Rook in the woods by himself with no one else to know.

He’d thought _something_. But it would have just been a concession and he was lucky that the others had come when they had, because Mary Mary had told him, she’d been right – something for nothing and they wouldn’t care about it.

It was good, the night had decided for him. It was good because if it hadn’t meant anything else, if Rook had been shaking apart and John just thought he was shaking, if deception was the friend of a general, then that was all it had to be. The way people thought of things could make cages, notional prisons Rook had spun the rope to hang himself in – had seen it enough to know – but had been left standing in, noose in hand, before he could made the short drop (a sudden stop). The easiest ground to recover was that the enemy hadn’t noticed was lost yet.

It was good.

He whistled for Boomer when the long loop curved back towards the house and Boomer circled around, unusually reluctant to leave his side. Peaches was waiting on the porch when Rook got back – she’d chosen to stay behind, not a fan of frozen grass sticking in her paws.

 

 

John was in the kitchen.

Sure. He had to start somewhere.

 

 

 

Rook said hello when he came in, beelined for the stove. John looked at him over his shoulder and smiled (a good thing, it was a _good thing_ ) easy and turned to face him when Rook didn’t smile back. “Joseph said the two of you have been walking the dog in the morning. He didn’t say it would be so fucking early,” added in a mutter and Rook noticed John’s hair was a little mussed, he was in pyjama pants and a thick coat and looked for all the world like a disgruntled owl. The coffee steaming at his elbow smelled sweet and milky – he must have found the sugar. “Jacob’s gone to prepare the church for the sermon today,” John continued. “Joseph wants you there for it.”

“I don’t usually go to the sermons,” Rook said, but fuck – he was glad Jacob wasn’t there. The last thing he wanted to do was to stage an offensive with Jacob “attrition” Seed nearby. Any kind of offensive. Jacob had a knack for seeing through him, cutting through things ( _only you_ ) to find what he needed.

“You’re making an exception for this one. He’s determined.”

Rook flicked the kettle on and took a teabag from the cupboard, almost drove his elbow back in attack when John’s hand lightly touched his side. He jerked away and stepped to the side and saw John, statue-still. Sharp, sharp John, who’d looked softer with his hair mussed and his thick coat, almost enough (just not enough) to soften that look. “Rook,” he said.

“I don’t like to be touched,” Rook said.

“You seemed to like it yesterday.” John _narrowed_ ; eyes-voice-frame, condensed down to a point.

“That was then,” Rook said. “This is now.” One of those things people said to draw lines in themselves, in memories. Like _ours_ when it meant _not yours_.

“Is this because of _dinner_?” John asked incredulously.

“It’s because I don’t want you to touch me,” Rook replied. John stepped towards him. Rook turned back to the counter instead of backing away, poured hot water into his mug and dunked the teabag in without really seeing it. “John,” in low warning at the barest pressure on his shoulder.

“You can’t be serious,” John said. Getting loud. That point, needle-thin and right at Rook. “You don’t trust us _either_.”

“Right,” Rook confirmed with a snort.

John’s lip curled just a little, like he was trying to stop it. “Why does it even matter, why do you even care about some sick followers?”

Rook shook his head because John wasn’t going to understand that it wasn’t about the fucking red peggies, it was about _asking_ and not getting, it was about

(not- _for­-_ you)

being promised a space in someone’s life and not getting it, even if he’d known he wouldn’t in the first place.

John snapped his fingers in front of him, jerked Rook back to the conversation. “You’ve killed _dozens_ of them,” he snapped, his fingers and words and buttons off shirts. “You can’t pretend you care about them now, not more than you want me and I _know_ you want me, Rook, we went past plausible deniability when you almost fucked me in the living room.”

Cut-crude and cruel, lashing out. He’d hurt him first. Fair was fair.

But options-wise, Rook couldn’t just attack him back – he was bigger and meaner and he wasn’t _free_ to, he was a hostage one way or another so he just pulled it down, calmed himself and let the circulation leave his skin, cooling, when

John grabbed his shoulders and shook him, hard. Surged into his space, anger and teeth and big blue eyes, “stop it, _stop it_ , where do you keep _going_?!” he demanded, when Rook hadn’t moved at all. “Come back _now_ ,” his voice cracking under strain, not sure if it should be black or blue, even red.

“John, that is _enough_.”

Joseph was between them then, hand outstretched to ward off John where he’d pushed him away, separated them to stand there, tall and immovable. “John, go,” cut out in the air (so said the father) and John’s face did something complicated. Joseph’s head tilted ( _what did I say_ ) and that was that. John defeated but not defused, shoving the door open and leaving the kitchen, letting it slam shut behind him.

Joseph turned to Rook. “Are you alright?”

His tea would be oversteeped by then, Rook thought – bitter and tongue-curdling, metallic. “I’m fine,” he said, and turned to pour the mug out into the sink. Swirled it tannin-dark down the drain and tried to rally himself.

Joseph took hold of his arm. “Please don’t judge John,” he said, pale-blue-wide behind yellow glass. “He tries. But he is afraid of losing things, the ones that mean the most to him.”

“I’m not a thing,” Rook said, rinsed the mug out and set it to the side, turned his head to Joseph but kept his body facing the sink, the window above it. The fog out in the trees.

Joseph frowned, the grey light casting him in ash. “You’re mistaking me on purpose,” he said, a note of frustration.

Rook hung his head, closed his eyes for a second. “No, I think I get it,” cynical to the marrow. Lifted it, looked at him. “A man; wasn’t that what you said before?” and all things considered, he was tired of Joseph and John and even Jacob holding Rook’s want inside them like they owned it, when the trade had been for Rook on his own terms. He reached out and threaded his hands into Joseph’s hair, pressed them against the sides of his face, loosening the tie and absorbing Joseph’s jolt of tension, the way he almost pulled back before he got that bit heavier, leaned in more with want-warning written over him even in shock, even in the battle of it with suspicion.

Rook brushed his thumbs over Joseph’s face, felt the heat of him and the bone so close to the surface, felt how Joseph’s eyelids fell so he could feel it. “Tell you what,” he said, because people touched others the way they wanted to be touched and Rook didn’t need to know Joseph’s language of touch to parrot it, make sounds where Joseph meant words. “I’ll give you all what you want. I’ll touch you.” Joseph’s pupils swung wide-black immediately, looking up at him. He didn’t seem to breathe. “Kiss you, fuck you – no,” Rook corrected thoughtfully when Joseph swallowed, saw he could still think about it, “let you fuck me,” a correction Joseph heard with a shudder that ran right through him, hands coming up to press over Rook’s. “Whatever you want,” and Rook nudged Joseph’s face with his own, tilted his head back to breathe with him, and said,

“and in exchange, you never try and tell me _soulmate_ again,”

and held firm when Joseph jerked back (whip-cracked), not hurting but not letting go either. ‘You stop pretending this was ever about _me_ , about me instead of about the Sinner and the three of you,” speaking louder when Joseph started shaking his head, when he said,

“it is,” wretched and furious and Rook, still speaking over him,

“because there’s no place for me here and you _know_ it, pretending isn’t fair. You can have what you want,” he assured him, gentle as drowning (lungs full of ocean), like dying in dreams. “If you just admit that it’s to _win_ ,” and Joseph finally ripped free, hair loosened and drifting down around his face, breathing hard.

“You are _wrong_ ,” Joseph spat, accent thick with wrath, fucking magnificent in it because it lit him up from the inside, man him a man again instead of More Than; seemed to make his blood run again, body made of flesh and blood and bone, ink and scars and nothing like sin and penance and God. “You’re wrong,” he said again, eyes glittering like scales, “if you think that is what we _want_ ,” said with contempt, directionless and loud. “We want you to find home in us,” Joseph said, dragging Rook’s hand to his chest, feeling his heart pounding there,

and Rook faltered, had to stop and swallow.

“You are _safe_ with us,” Joseph told him fervently, “and we will prove it, prove to you that this is what God wants for us. That we are yours, like you are _ours_.”

                  - snap-fracture like frost -

and Rook couldn’t speak, even when he tried. Made a stifled kind of noise instead and pulled away, because he’d been worried about Jacob, of all people, when for what Joseph wanted Jacob was the least dangerous because Rook had never felt safe around him, knew exactly what he was.

“You are here with us now, Rook,” Joseph told him, hurting and holding on, Joseph who suffered with others then led them to die. “You don’t understand yet, but you will. I promise you.”

 

Rook didn’t want to understand,

(was afraid he was starting to).

 

 

-

 

 

Rook felt hollow afterwards, shaken by the loss of a fight he’d thought was sure. So Joseph told him he would join John and Jacob and Faith where she waited at the compound, Rook agreed. Sat in the back of the truck just him and his dog because Boomer had clawed his way up instead, his Good Boy and still oddly attentive, head on his lap the whole way. Faith was waiting in front of the church when they made their way through the small compound buildings, past barbed-wire fences and peggies arrayed en masse. She was ethereal in white, doe eyes in a sea of predators and so much more fucking dangerous than the lot of them, unable to look at Rook for more than a moment before she gracefully made her way inside.

A beautiful retreat, Rook had to admit, and sat all the way down the back when he followed the others inside.

Rook always forgot what The Father could do. How Joseph would step forward from the sigil in his narrow church and the high white ceiling and electrify the air around him, the whole fucking world bending as he spoke, as his accent shaped words made of thunder and salvation. Words for eager ears and followers leaning in, pulled in.

He opened himself, Rook thought, he had to; couldn’t think anything else because he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Joseph opened his arms and his faith swept out bright-blinding, the quasar to the black hole in him, the debris of stars luring them in while gravity did the rest. Brightness and magnitude in lean fingers outstretched like he could hold on to them, so Rook heard

patience,

and he heard,

forgiveness,

and a question Joseph hadn’t asked him yet, wouldn’t if he knew better (but would anyway). Joseph spoke of sin, he paced like a predator leashed, seized by conviction and when he lifted his arms the whole room stood, rapturous, frenetic, crying out –

Crying, Rook noticed, when the line of sight to Joseph was broken by bodies. When he could see other things again and saw a shorter man near the back. Off-rhythm from the rest, hitting the wrong notes. Rook watched him, narrowed in. His eyes were faintly red but so were so many others, brought to tears by forgiveness by a figure towering on a mountain, made human in front of them.

Crying first, but the rage that contorted his face sent to the rest of him red too, no broken capillaries but something in his hand, sharp and glinting when he stepped out of his seat. He moved and Rook did too, kicked at the back of his knee when he came out behind him in the aisle. He hooked his leg when the man went down with a cry and it turned him on the way down so he landed on his back. Rook stepped over him and kicked at his arm before he could lift it, stepped down hard on the man’s wrist to keep it there. A box cutter slid out of his hand, already stained with blood because the man had been holding it without the sheath, just a raw length of knife half-cut into his palm that looked like it had dried there hours ago.

The peggies next to him noticed first and the silence rippled out from Rook and the man almost frothing at the mouth where he was struggling beneath his boot, amazingly strong for someone as thin as he was but pinned down by the So Very Much there was of Rook. Rook could feel Joseph’s attention from him at the end of the aisle and the peggie who lunged out of the pews next to him almost caught him by surprise – he had a proper knife and better camouflage, he was someone meant to hurt people.

Rook wasn’t meant to, if you looked at the trajectory of his life, but he certainly meant to when he elbowed the man in the throat, lifted his arm to take a shallow slash that was mostly a flail when the man suddenly couldn’t breathe anymore, took the knife from him with a twist and showed him how it was done.

One peggie, two peggie, no peggies left – the first on the floor raging incoherently, the other’s eyes almost as red as where he was scrabbling at his throat, the neat slice down the side that didn’t seep like movies said it would because arteries fucking sprayed everywhere. Not angry. Just dying.

Rook turned his attention to the first, already trying to get up and Rook drew back to kick when the man jerked and collapsed, the top of his head just fucking _gone_ , spattered everywhere.

When he looked up he was staring down the business end of a revolver, Joseph’s grip on it sure and easy, lined up behind the shot (rosary dangling from the one at his side) before he handed it to Faith. He started walking towards them but Rook’s attention was caught by,

“She can’t hear me,” the man – the fucking _boy_ , someone he’d have carded on a Friday night – gurgled on the ground, paler and paler as the blood seeped out of him into the hardwood, so rich it seemed black. He told Rook, he wept, he got out baffle-hurt, “there’s something in the _way_ ,” and Rook knelt down in the blood (pooled lukewarm into his pants), pressed his hand to the wound on the boy’s neck to try and keep a few more seconds in him.

“What is?” he asked, and the boy’s breath came out as a wheeze, his throat convulsed against Rook’s hand, wet and slick and muscle struggling.

“What something?” Rook demanded, louder,

_I saw him but he wasn’t there_

and bodies left empty in the woods, but then the boy was gone too.

 

There was space cleared around him when Rook stood, pants wet with blood from the knee down and hands dripping. Joseph had come to stand over them, detached and cold as he looked down at the man dying on the floor. He looked up and Rook didn’t recoil the way he wanted to at that anger banked in Joseph’s eyes, scaled up beyond where men grew. Joseph looked at his congregation around them (how did they not _see_ it) and saw their pale faces ringed around, the wide berth they were being given. The Father. The Sinner.

“Our brother has saved us,” he told them. “From the sickness that took the minds of these men from them. That made them want to _hurt_ our family.”

The crowd’s attention turned to Rook and he could feel them scanning him – trying to fit the shape of him, great and bloodied, into this shape Joseph had described. That notional prison that would work so well, Joseph suggested, he told them – he stepped over the bodies, blood pooling around his boots while he touched the sides of Rook’s face (rosary rough on his cheek) but stayed back. Not reaching out for him, to pull him close; hands reframing Rook for them. “You protected us,” Joseph told him – no, Joseph said to him but Told the room, spoke to every soul watching. “Thank you, Rook,” and Rook _hated_ ,

(hurt)

because it was _to_ him and not _for_ him, it was fucking performative ( _anything_ in words and _nothing_ in the end) so he kept his lips covering his teeth but he smiled at Joseph and said, “well,” in his deep voice, slow-heavy, “I’m always happy to kill peggies for you, Seed,” because _Father_ was what he wanted and _Joseph_ was too close.

Joseph’s smile back making him a charming, misbehaving thing and Rook tried not to glare because Joseph wasn’t going to keep this up. Joseph wasn’t safe and he couldn’t make Rook feel like he was – the Seeds knew one way to do things (a man’s brains dripping on the floor) and it was only a matter of time before they hurt him,

and that was fine because he wanted to feel fucking _punished_ for what he’d felt so that he wouldn’t feel it again. He wanted to be right. He wanted them to prove him right again, to vindicate him so hurting meant something. A cautionary lesson made from a mistake (gutted and made useful, hung on the wall of his goddamn personal development).

Joseph could see it. Joseph had never missed much.

 

 

Mass ended.

It wasn’t the worst time Rook had spent in that church.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I also think that casual acts of rejection are the best way to deal with someone with pathological abandonment issues, also Joseph may be DTF but he is more specifically DTFWPROHC, Down To Fuck With Profound Realisation Of Human Connection, Rook, you really missed some critical letters.
> 
> Title from Landfill by Daughter, more beautiful than it deserves.


	20. like my spine was a reminder

 

Jacob approved too much. He’d been satisfied at the sight of the bodies, a professional’s passing grade and a nod at Rook ( _good_ and a gunshot) before he’d turned on the men guarding the church, the failures.

John had shoved his way into the back of the car when Rook had gotten in, sat there with Boomer getting hair on his tailored pants and bitching at Rook, whose head was too full to push him away (something in the way and sutures down his arm). Tattoos just smudges behind latex gloves while he rubbed antiseptic down the shallow slice in his arm.

“It’s fine,” Rook had told him while John pulled it shut with sutures, mean enthusiasm for something that barely needed it.

“It’s a knife wound,” John said, and he was good at closing cuts. It might scar, and that was something John was good at too. “You got stabbed by someone affected by an illness we don’t understand yet and they bled all over your _open knife wound_.”

“Slice,” Rook offered. “It’s just a cut, really,” and John was very good at looks like that, _I’m surrounded by idiots_ in a tense jaw line. The next tug stung. “And you said it wasn’t contagious,” Rook added, watched him carefully.

“We _think_ it isn’t,” John said, ripping open a gauze pad. “But I also thought I’d spend today seeing if you’re strong enough to fuck me up against a wall, so _apparently_ you should take my conclusions with a grain of salt.”

Rook felt very winded suddenly, in the back of a moving truck with John’s mouth and his lean legs and the sudden slap of gauze onto the cut. “Thanks,” he said tightly, strong enough to do that any fucking day of the week and curling in on himself to hide it, stayed there all the way back to the house.

 

 

 

Rook had gotten used to washing blood off his hands. It dried rust-red in the whorls of his fingerprints. Black under his fingernails. Someone knocked on the bathroom door while it swirled down the drain, but Rook pretended not to hear.

That never worked for long.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook was dressed after a long shower and trying to negotiate a particularly soft jumper out from under Peaches when he tried again.

“Are you alright?” John asked, hovering in the doorway. Trying not to look like he was.

Rook shrugged. “I’m fine.”

John made a disgusted noise and slammed Rook’s door – he could hear him stomping down the hallway to his own room, a second door closing.

After a moment, his phone rang.

**Incoming call: John.**

Rook had a voicemail. This was exactly the kind of bullshit they were made for. But he answered anyway. “… Hello?”

“You’re a ridiculous human being,” John snapped.

“You’re the one calling me from ten yards away,” Rook felt compelled to point out. “You left a face-to-face conversation to call me.”

“Yes, because that’s the only time you’ll actually speak. It’s one trick your dog does more reliably than you, have you realised that?”

“I’m hanging up,” Rook decided, but _wait wait wait wait WAIT_ from the speaker made him stop.

“Are you,” John said slowly, like he was really talking to Boomer, “alright?”

Rook sat down on his bed, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just told you I’m fine.”

“Yes, you also tried to convince my brother’s staff that your first name was Deputy and you left the church looking like you were the one who got shot in the head. I don’t like this, Rook,” John warned. “I don’t like _repeating_ myself. So do this the easy way and just tell me.”

“What’s the hard way?” Rook asked.

“I haven’t decided yet. But I’m sure I can think of something, aren’t you? _Deputy_?”

Rook lay back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, baffled. “… What are you even asking me? You know I’ve killed peggies before, this wasn’t different.”

“Fine. I want to know what it’s going to take for you to get over what happened. Just tell me the best way to end this, I’ll do it and we can pretend we did the whole,” an almost audible dismissive wave, “pointless cold shoulder stand-off and that you won. Congratulations on keeping the _moral high ground_ , since it matters so much to you.”

Rook was speechless. John had that effect – could go from charming to breathtakingly offensive without skipping a beat. It was a gift he had to have cultivated over years of practice. He probably talked too fast, smiled too wide for people to notice unless they paid attention.

“Rook?”

“ _What happened_ ,” Rook repeated, sitting up. “Tell me, what do you think happened?”

John spoke warily, too smart not to see the pitfall he was standing beside but never fucking able to leave well enough alone. “We refused to tell you what was going on with the affected followers – _our_ followers, in case you’re forgotten – and you were offended because we didn’t trust you with that _highly sensitive_ information.”

 “Yeah,” Rook said, staring out unseeing at the door, through it. “That’s one way to put it.”

“There’s a thousand ways to put anything. Go on, enlighten me,” from John the lawyer, ready to cross-examine Rook’s goddamn feelings.

His stupid, pointless fucking feelings.

“You want me to trust you,” Rook said, heard seams tearing and unfisted his hand from the bedspread. “But you don’t want to earn it. You don’t want to give any back, it’s not worth that to you.”

It wasn’t a radio, he could hear John’s breathing; it wasn’t made of static. Just the steady rise and fall of his chest, two rooms away.

“Is that all?” he asked, and heat spiked through Rook, the soft-dark base of his brain and his thumb moving to _end call_ just as John said, “you think it’s not worth anything?” in time for him to pause, to stop again when he should have.

Rook couldn’t answer. Anger had tied his mouth shut, sewn shut the seams he’d ripped open for the words to escape (in his bedspread, frayed there).

“ _Worth_ anything. I saw you first,” John said, idle-deadly like he was threatening him over the radio again, like Rook had blown up another building he’d liked. “Did you know that?” Didn’t wait for Rook to answer because (he couldn’t, he _couldn’t_ ) John liked to ask questions no one could answer. “I spent my entire life saying _yes_ to everything I could – every drug, every drink, every beating and _exorcism_ my parents could dream up to _fix_ me – and one night, I’d taken something. I don’t even know what it was, but I woke up in my dreams and there was something… _between_ me and my brothers and I thought: okay. I’ve done it. I’ve finally broken _enough_. Well done, _John_ ,” his own name said with acid,

and Rook had heard _beating_ and _exorcism_ and ( _fix_ me) that had been in his file too, had been in nights spent listening to muffled screaming and unfamiliar voices.

“And then I saw someone else,” John said, knives and Needles and a night with at the wrong goddamn party and the wrong goddamn brownie, “and he was so… _alone_. He was so alone I could _taste_ it and I saw him and I knew, I _knew_ , that he was mine. Ours. That he was real and I pinned him down and I wrote my name in him because he was already slipping away and he was never going to come back,”

tracing letters in him over and over that Rook couldn’t see the next morning, hard enough to hurt but not enough to make them real,

“except he didn’t come. So I told Joseph, and I told Jacob, and do you know what they told me?” John asked, well into the swing of it now, enough for him to laugh just a little, bitter-traces in his voice. “They told me I was _sick_. That I needed _help_. They told me to come and find them because it was time I came _home_. So I did. But I insisted, so Joseph looked, but he didn’t find anything. And if Joseph couldn’t find him, well – he must not have been real. Because no matter how small, how insignificant, no matter how _fucked-up_ , Joseph sees everyone.”

Rook’s eyes were burning. He hadn’t blinked in too long and they were hot like his lungs, chest cramped from holding his breath steady.

“But then _Jacob_ saw him one night and suddenly it was true after all, because I might see things but not Jacob. Not big brother Jacob,” bitten out like he was mad at him still when Rook knew he wasn’t, just the aftertaste of anger because some wounds scarred, “so they tried so hard to find him but there was nothing. Years. Of nothing. Until one day he crashed back into my dreams shrieking like he was being torn in half and then days later, _Jacob_ dreams he’s in one of his little project rooms and then the whole place burns down and we don’t see anything because I _told_ them, _I_ _knew_ he was real but did it matter? No. Because he was already dead! Jacob did what he does and years of dreaming and arguing just went up in smoke. Jacob came to us and he told us what he’d _done_ ,”

“I escaped,” Rook said numbly, “I was fine,”

“and he’s my brother,” John pressed on relentlessly, unstoppable, “the two of believed in me when no one else did, they saw worth in me when there _was_ none. He’s my soulmate and he hadn’t known, so I had to forgive him, didn’t I? But I couldn’t. Because you were ours and you were so. fucking. _alone_ ,” and Rook pressed his hand to his chest hard, fisted it against his ribs because he hated that word, he couldn’t, “and he _killed_ you.”

That was the thing about phones; Rook could hear his breathing and John could hear his, rasping in and out while he dug his fingers into his chest, tried to pull it out of him.

“How’s that for trust?” John asked bitterly, and Rook didn’t know what to say (never did because he’d never had to) so he said nothing. Let the silence drag on because Rook’s soulmates didn’t want him, never had, but John had stood up to argue the point.

He didn’t know what to say to that. Point-zero-zero-endless-zeroes had told him that wasn’t how the world worked.

John made a noise, frustrated and ugly and, “fine,” made of edges, “I knew this was—”

“I called you Needles,” Rook got out, just told him the thing that came into his head when John was going to go, when he was just going and going and getting worse (screaming all his life).

“… What?” John demanded, voice too close like he’d grabbed at the phone, brought it back too fast.

“I called you Needles,” Rook said again, had no idea what he was saying or where he was going. “I called Jacob Knife and Joseph nothing because I looked at you for years and I never,” not now, he told his throat gone hot, don’t you fucking _dare_ , “once heard your names, and you,” words dying before he could get them out, stumbling over each other (a spider’s thread to hell), until,

“you have no idea what it’s like,” Rook told John, told Needles, told the empty space of years without him, “to want you. Any of you.” Rook had to stop, stopped while he waited for his words to come back. “You have no idea,” he repeated, voice cracking under the weight.

He hadn’t been one in a million. No one had been coming for him.

“... I wanted you,” John said. “I always did,” and Rook felt it, the horrible melting-ugly that faces did when someone was about to cry and didn’t want to, he didn’t want to hear that from John or Joseph or fuck, even Jacob, he was the wrong percentile for it.

“Why is this easier?” John asked him quietly, asked while Rook tried to pull himself back together. “The phone. Tell me why.”

Rook shook his head, made harder by the lump in his throat. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s …” and he faltered because John had told him something painful and Rook was in pain, fair was fucking fair, “there’s so much of you,” he said, “when there was none before,” and John’s noise of understanding was so much worse than he’d thought it would be.

“It’s for you,” John said. “All of it,”

and that meant the ugly too, meant warm hands (happy, happy) and corpses littered over the countryside, Joseph’s religious madness and Jacob’s red rooms and John, that handful of razors unwrapped and Rook there to hold it. So Rook asked,

“what if I don’t want any of it?”

and John just said, “so hang up,” and he didn’t,

he just let the seconds tick by on his phone, **call duration** going up and up.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook set his alarm for the next morning, but Jacob beat him to it. Opened his door while Rook was still groping for his phone, the _click-clack_ of Boomer’s claws breaking the shrill string of beeps. “What do you want?” Rook asked, throat raw when it hadn’t earned it, tears that dried there.

“Your dog needs walking, and so do you,” Jacob said. “Get up.”

Rook grimaced. Jacob wasn’t likely to go away. He’d probably stand there until the heat-death of the universe (the Collapse) if Rook made it a waiting game. But it was too early, and too cold for Jacob, the copper-bright of him and the hard edges of him.

Rook had to change to go, went to close the door and found Jacob leaning more than halfway across the doorframe and blocking it.

It was cold, and Jacob didn’t move out of the way for a long moment. Face in shadow, just the gleam of reflected light in his eyes. Rook was about to give up, reasonably sure Peaches wouldn’t tear him a new one for sidling back into the bed with cold limbs, when Jacob finally moved aside.

Told him,

“downstairs in five minutes,”

and walked away.

 

 

The days away hadn’t made Jacob any lazier, hadn’t softened him like the fatigue should have.

They made him worse.

 

 

Jacob made Rook run the whole fucking route, kept up with him with a tireless, metronome-beat pace, running Rook like a hound. Nipping at his heels with shoves and sly jabs when Rook tried to slow down or dart away. Rook staggered back to the porch when they were done, tried to lean on the post and ended up half-sprawled and sweaty on Jacob’s shoulder when Jacob pushed him to get his attention. Jacob grunted at the impact, “you’re not done,” he told him. “Take five.” He dumped him on the porch steps and walked off around the side like he always did, left Rook panting and more than a little shaky.

Boomer collapsed on the porch, fucking _unconscious_ and Rook had enough time to bitterly envy him before Jacob came back and dragged him off, a man over forty goddamn years old and just about ready to run him into the ground.

It might have slowed him down more than he realised because Rook almost dislocated Jacob’s elbow ten minutes into brawling – got through an opening he’d never seen before and almost took it out on autopilot before he caught himself.

Jacob was fighting conservatively, taking hits where he could and he was going to be a fucking _mess_ later, would be a mass of bruises down his side, might piss blood from the elbow he’d taken to the kidney. But he wasn’t taking risks, he was just fighting to stay fighting, alert and watchful and waiting for something while Rook tried to crack through for a decisive blow and couldn’t find a hole in his guard.

Trying to wear him down, Rook finally saw when Jacob took a hit with barely a flinch and just fucking exploded into action, got him knee-gut-neck in one-two-three and sent him back against the fence, back hitting it hard and Jacob closing in. Rook tried to tug his arm up to go for the face and found it caught – distracted, no apparent attack to block for a second, he looked and saw,

“Did you just,” he frowned, “stab my sleeve to the fence?”

“It’s been a while since we had a talk, just the two of us, deputy,” Jacob said conversationally, like he hadn’t just stabbed Rook’s sleeve to the fence. So deeply that Rook would have to either try and rip his whole sleeve down the middle or wait for Jacob to back off enough to pull the knife out.

“ _Hi_ , Jacob,” Rook said darkly, tugging at the sleeve just to make a point.

Jacob idly tapped the hilt of the knife with one finger. “You called me something a few days ago,” he said, caught Rook’s free-hand strike with his other hand and twisted his arm straight, pinned it between them. His eyes gleamed, river-blue, _what big eyes you have_. “What was it again?”

Rook sucked in air between his teeth, arm stuck at a painful angle. “You know,” he said, “I’m not at my best all tied up – I can’t remember? What a shame.”

Jacob leaned in, kicked his feet apart to avoid the kick Rook had shifted for, just put one foot between his and leaned in. “Try.”

Rook squinted in exaggerated thoughtfulness, at the ominous sky past the red-blue-blur that made up Jacob in his peripheral vision. “…No,” he drew out. “Oh, wait.” Glared down at Jacob. “ _Coward_?”

Jacob hummed low in his throat, pressed closer until the fence dug into Rook’s back from leaning back too hard against it. “That was the one,” Jacob said, and Rook could feel the words rumbling in his chest from that rough voice at that distance. “You think I’m scared, huh,” and he tsked, slow and condescending. “Scared,” he said again, like he was tasting the word. “You know, John told me something interesting – _don’t_ ,” he said firmly, twisted Rook’s captive wrist when he tried to yank free, twisted it until Rook’s vision throbbed and he snapped his teeth at him. “Down, brat,” Jacob said, catching Rook’s throat in his other hand and just propping him up with it, Rook’s body curling down to try and ease the pressure on his wrist.

“I think you’re the one that’s scared,” voice lowered and he changed his grip on Rook’s wrist, pressed Rook’s hand to his own throat.

Rook frowned. “Touch me,” Jacob said, “do it.” That look again, cold and cynical. Mocking him. “You want to – don’t try that,” he tsked when Rook glowered, “You want to, so do it. Don’t waste my time, deputy.”

“You have a high opinion of yourself,” Rook muttered, sick of being pinned to things ( _trapped_ ) and he’d dug his fingers into Jacob already, he could feel his heartbeat.

“You want humility, go to Joe. I’ll wait here.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Rook said hotly and John had _told_ him, John had taken what he’d learned and fucking _told them_ before Rook understood it himself and he should have known, there was no reason for that curling-sinking feeling in his chest.

Jacob tsked. “You do. Go on, say it.”

“Oh, sure. Trust,” Rook spat. “Not whatever the fuck _you’re_ thinking,” and he pulled his hand back, shoved Jacob away with enough effort to move a boulder (Sisyphus each day) and reaching over to yank the knife out.

“You think you’ve earned that?” Jacob asked. He made every question sound like a challenge – Rook was never sure if it was on purpose. _Convince me_ in feet hip-width apart, squared shoulders, Jacob against the world.

Rook was more used to that than most, was big enough to take it. “No,” he replied, tossing the knife into the grass. “But _I_ trust,” stressed, hissed sibilants, “you to know you won’t get anywhere unless you _bend_ ,”

and Rook trusted him not to, Jacob the immovable fucking object, that axiom of the universe that things bent around instead. Reliable as the goddamn sunrise; radio calls and Jacob, unbending. So the blood drained from him when Jacob broke form, just shrugged and said,

“fine,”

and walked around to the side, bent down to his jacket – he had that distinctive stride like all the Seeds, weight from the hips, almost a saunter. Exactly sure of his size, his weight, where he was putting it.

Rook watched him, struck dumb.

“We’ll do it your way,” Jacob told Rook, who nodded (bones buzz-humming) before it really registered. Jacob straightened already unrolling a leather strap between his hands, and Rook lunged for the fence.

“Easy, easy!” Jacob grabbed him by the leg and dragged him back a few inches before Rook kicked out, made him grunt in pain. “Easy,” he said with pressure on his back like Rook was one of his Judges, an animal pressed down with the whites of its eyes showing. “Look – I said _look_.” Rook’s neck hurt from how tight he held it, pulled his head back to eye what Jacob was holding out.

The leather strap sat in his hand. Rough at the edges; probably something the peggies had made.

Jacob twisted it easily around his own wrists, held the ends in his hands. Bound himself to himself, free to let go any time he wanted. Raised his eyebrows – the only man to make _tying himself up_ condescending, somehow still in charge. “I’m going to sit down,” Jacob said. “And you’re going to come here.”

No, Rook was definitely not. “No, I’m definitely not.” Fucking _poetry_.

“Yes, you are.” Jacob sat down, legs stretched out in front of him. “No hands,” he said, gripped the leather to keep himself there. “Do what you have to do. I won’t stop you.”

Rook’s breath seized.

Jacob, offering up his throat. _Jacob_ , free for him to do whatever he wanted, to pin him down and _stop_ him, to _beat_ him, to—

“You’re holding onto that,” he said, voice too deep. “You’ll just let go. This is a trap.”

Jacob’s teeth were very white, surrounded by the red of his beard. “That’s what _trust_ is, deputy,” he stressed. “I won’t let go. Promise.”

Rook circled, paced back and forth but unable to take his eyes off him, tension coiling in his shoulders. “And if you do?” he asked.

“I won’t.”

“If you do?”

“Then you walk away.”

Circling closer. “You’ll stop me.”

“I won’t,” repeated like Rook was hard of hearing, like Rook was the crazy one.

And maybe he was because Rook huffed out a breath through his nose but he hadn’t _left_ yet, he was moving in those circles because he couldn’t – he was bruised and sore and _sure_ it was a trap but he couldn’t make himself leave. Rook and all the wolves Jacob had ever trapped, _more than you’d think_ and doorframes cracked off the wall.

“If I say yes?” he asked. “What do you get out of it?”

Jacob smiled. “Do you know why the strong get what they want, Rook?” he asked. Rhetorically, Jacob the Soldier, the Orator and the General, teaching lessons and pulling teeth. “The weak think it’s because they take. But the thing is,” and Rook stepped closer, testing because the only thing keeping Jacob’s hands tied was his fucking grip, but Jacob didn’t waste effort, all of this would have a point, “a weak man takes. The weak _take_. They wear down trying to keep it until they lie down and die, but the strong,” and tilting his head back, that satisfied slant when Rook came to a stop by his legs.

“the strong know it’s already theirs. Everyone else just has to catch up.” The sheer fucking _arrogance_ of that sticking in Rook, rubbing him the wrong way (all bristles) and Jacob seeing it, but doing what he had meant to. “Go ahead,” Jacob said, settling his arms under his head. Reclining on the grass, still damp and him at ease, _reclining_ like it was a normal thing to lay himself out for a man who beat him bloody every morning he could.

Catch up, Rook heard.

Rook was on his knees before he knew it, found his hand on Jacob’s throat. Big enough to span it, the old scars on the backs of his knuckles and newer ones. His hand, pressing down hard enough to feel Jacob swallow. But he didn’t tense. Stayed down, that strong body relaxed, eyes heavy lidded but watchful.

Waiting.

“What’s to stop me from killing you?” Rook asked, found himself whispering even though there was no one to overhear them. The grey-crackling of frost in the fog, the storm that hadn’t made up its mind. Jacob, red in the grey-green and his throat under his hand.

Jacob looked pleased by the question. “Nothing.”

Rook hissed in a breath, hand flexing on it enough for Jacob to wheeze a little as his chest rose, but his arm stayed behind his head, unwound and waiting. Waiting for Rook to hurt him,

( _you think I can’t take pain, deputy_ )

if he wanted, and revulsion crawled up Rook’s spine, down his arms, made him shift his grip to Jacob’s sternum where it was safe, where Rook was safe. Safety on, the steady rise and fall.

Jacob raised his eyebrows, shifted a little to get comfortable.

Rook yanked his arms out from behind his head purely out of spite, trying to unbalance him. Jacob let him, shifted with an amused look – Rook made little when he never had been, young in young behaviour under an indulgent eye. “Stop it,” Rook snapped, smacked his knuckles into Jacob’s wrist when he almost thoughtfully curled his fingers in to try for a fist around the leather. Hard enough that his own skin stung with the impact and Jacob growled at him. Rook hesitated and he looked at Jacob, dared him to say something before he turned his attention to a long scar that twisted all the way from bicep to wrist.

 _What are you doing_ in a high, shrill voice in his head, like an RPG whistling through the air.

He didn’t know. Couldn’t answer, so he didn’t.

Jacob flexed his arm but Rook ignored him in favour of a cluster of what looked like cigarette burns on the back of his hand. “You smoke?” Rook asked, turning it this way and that. Old, puckered skin in four perfect rounds, one so deep it was dented instead of raised.

“Our father did,” Jacob said, watching him. Fingers twitching when Rook pressed to the back of his knuckles to spread them out, held to the other by a loop of leather still.

“Ouch,” Rook said mildly, measuring their hands together and smug at the close but undeniable result. The skin of Jacob’s arms was burnt irregularly and scarred, faint freckles between them that he hadn’t been able to see before. Hadn’t looked for. Jacob kept watching him but started to relax, releasing tension when Rook didn’t snap his elbow or twist it to hurt him.

Wary. Waiting for it and Rook, too curious to walk away and knowing he should.

“Chemical burns?” Rook asked, trying to look at Jacob but he couldn’t, he only got as high as his cheek.

Jacob hummed. “No, oil fires. Gulf War.”

“I always thought you hammed it up,” Rook lied just to be a shit and feeling bare in his exposed skin, his arms and the back of his neck, his throat. He let go of his arms to reach for the ball-chain of dog tags around Jacob’s neck. “Some sort of army nerd that got shot in the foot in basic and was dramatic about it.” He jumped when Jacob pinched his side, hard, yanked the chain out from under the shirt roughly in revenge, made Jacob hiss at the drag of it. The metal of his dog tags was worn, shiniest at the middle where they’d rubbed on his clothes. _JACOB SEED_ because he hadn’t been _motherfucker_ yet, then his serial number. _O POS_ , then _NO PREF_. “No preference,” Rook echoed aloud, Jacob the fucking _cult leader_ and _no preference_ for his religious designation, tucked next to his heart.

“Yeah, laugh it up,” Jacob replied, casual words that didn’t match his face – or might have, because Rook didn’t understand Jacob’s expressions, never knew what he was thinking. 

“Oh, so you do get why it’s funny,” Rook said. “How ridiculous you are.”

“You love it,” Jacob grinned ( _what big teeth you have_ ), stretching out a little longer and there was a lot of him, actually, there was a lot of muscle and a lot of … Jacob, there was a lot to take in for Rook, whose mouth was a little dry.

“You’re pretty full of yourself,” Rook said.

Jacob snorted. “I don’t need to know what it is you like so much,” he told Rook, “all I care is that you do. And you really, really do, brat.”

Rook was grinding his teeth – made himself stop. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I don’t mind it. And all three of you know what you look like. Four of you, actually,” continuing his investigation and Jacob had a freckle on his _palm_ , just one random motherfucker sitting there. “So don’t give me that shit.” He pulled at the neck of Jacob’s shirt to see a scar that looked like it had been stapled together, a tight pull of skin that was either a hatchet job or an accident, because no one got stitches that wrong. Jacob pulled his shirt up to show him the rest (how it sliced him in half, shoulder to hip) and laughed, rough-sly when Rook looked away, hissed because Jacob seemed to know just _fine_ and he fought every day, had a well-defined chest further lined with scars, a red happy trail into his pants and freckles around it all.

Jacob might have been laughing mean but Rook couldn’t help it, his mirror neurons worked fine and his lips twitched.

“Don’t stop on my account,” when Rook’s hand stopped on a scar that was frankly just bizarre, curled around in a circle like a brand but too jagged, splayed across Jacob’s hips and disappearing into his pants.

“You’re a Herald of the _Lord_ ,” Rook reminded him, sarcastic and yeah, sure, with his hands all over him, inches from the line of hair to his _fucking dick_ , Jesus Christ.

“That’s not a saint,” Jacob said, the _no preference_ cult leader. He stretched his shoulders, closed his eyes. “Back up. Or don’t. Either way, don’t bother me about it.”

 _Don’t bother me about it_ – the fucking gall of it, like Rook was somehow annoying for reacting. He’d never been so personally tempted to knee someone in the groin before.

“You’re the kind of guy with no issue getting naked in locker rooms, huh,” Rook muttered.

“Nothing to be ashamed of.”

Point taken but not fucking necessary, Rook thought, and yanked at the line of hair to hear Jacob hiss.

“Spiteful little shit,” Jacob accused but he didn’t _move_ , _what are you **doing**_ repeated, live rounds incoming.

“I don’t fucking know,” Rook muttered, and pulled Jacob’s shirt down for him. Just looked for a moment because now he knew the kind of body that shirt had the goddamn gall to cover up and it belonged to _Jacob_ , and he should leave.

He should leave.

Except, “what did John tell you?” Rook asked, because he had to know, he had to _know_ what he’d given to John and lost.

Jacob clenched his jaw before Rook’s shocked eyes, Jacob looked at the sky. “He told me,” he said slowly, grudgingly “that we hurt you,” and Rook’s breath escaped in a hiss before he could stop it.

“What else?” Rook asked urgently, leaning down over him and Jacob looking disgruntled by it, bothered by questioning.

“Nothing,” he said shortly.

Rook shook his head, didn’t know when he’d gotten so close. “I don’t believe you.”

“So don’t.”

Rook frowned but he couldn’t read Jacob properly even at that distance, close enough to make out the flecks of white around his irises.

He couldn’t _tell_ ,

and Jacob lunged up in the pause between heartbeats, crunched up to catch his mouth and let Rook’s lower lip drag free between his teeth when he fell back.

Back.

Back.

“… No touching,” Rook croaked when he could, when his mind took _Jacob_ and _mouth_ and a vague sort of hurtling-falling feeling and smashed them together hard enough for them to click.

“No hands,” Jacob corrected with a smirk, stretched his fingers out around the band pointedly.

He had said no hands.

He had.

And Rook’s were flexing on Jacob’s shirt over and over, around his shoulder because he couldn’t, he’d just been,

Jacob was,

and he didn’t _know_ but apparently Jacob did because he hooked his bound arms behind Rook’s neck and pulled him back in, unresisting because ( _all the better to eat you with_ ) nothing made sense as Jacob searched his face, muttered “so fucking beautiful,” low and then he pulled Rook in to kiss him hard like he was punishing him for it, dragging penance out with the wet heat of his mouth. Kissed him like he wanted to crawl inside him while Rook scrabbled at the ground to try and get a hold on something. Landed on Jacob’s shoulders again because Jacob was _steady_ even when he was tilting his head to lick behind Rook’s teeth, to suck on his tongue, to take control because he always had been, really, so Rook reached up and yanked his arms off his neck, pushed them back to the ground without meeting resistance because Jacob had said, he’d _said_

_(you want me_

                      but he hadn’t said it _back_ )

Rook’s arms were shaking because when he leaned back Jacob had to follow to keep him there and it felt like leading him for Jacob to chase his mouth, that split second of breath before he let Jacob press to him again, the muscles of his neck straining before Rook pressed him down to catch him instead, to bite him and soothe with a gentle turn of his head when that made Jacob growl. His arms were shaking because they didn’t want to be there, and “say it’s over,” Jacob cajoled, _coerced_ , “and I can touch you,” like ice, like a livewire sparking so Rook ripped free and staggered back onto his feet, his knees almost gave out before he regained his balance.

He stood there, breathing hard and Jacob sat up with a bruised-red mouth and a forest fire in his skin, licked his lips like a wolf tasting blood.

“I’m walking away,” Rook said too-loud, slashing his hand in a jerky motion because Jacob had said, he’d _said_ , and he didn’t stand up to follow. Didn’t try to stop him, tugged his wrists free and wrapped the leather up around itself. “I’m going,” Rook added to have a thing to say, and he almost stumbled on his first steps to the house but he got there.

Alone.

 

 

 

It had been three days since he called Mary May.

It took hours for Rook to remember he'd need the radio.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say that weird bondage-themed trust exercises are also not the way to go but honestly it basically worked. Fun fact, Jacob is using controlled contact techniques to decrease Rook's flight distance. Like with wolves. Variable flight distance is how wolves became dogs, or so it's theorised.
> 
> Also fuck you, John, you ended up fucking in like eight variations of this chapter and that is not in the outline.
> 
> Chapter title from No Care by Daughter.


	21. how i ruined everything (by saying it out loud)

It took Rook a while to find a good spot. Jacob was back, and he may have driven off but he was still prowling around, John was fuck knew where and Joseph had a knack for showing up wherever he wanted. The only place they never were, when Rook really thought about it, was his room. Jacob would open the door to wake him but never any other time, never came in; John had hovered in the threshold like a vampire and Joseph had never so much as mentioned his room once he showed him where it was.

The rain started while he put the radio back together, slow-methodically reattaching the wires. _Tap. Tap. Tap, tap-tap_ until it was a constant against the window, pouring-drumming down. The sound hid his footsteps while he crept up the stairs back to his room. He put it down by his bed, turned the volume down to almost soon as soon as he turned it on.

Mary May answered so fast she must have been waiting, “Rook!” with volume at nothing but so loud in the quiet he looked at the door.

No one came. “Mary May,” he said. “I don’t have long. What have you got for me?”

“Gotcha,” all business but a break, a relief, from his hands on Jacob and Joseph’s on him, John on the phone. “The sheriff and his people are doing well. Some of them resettled back at their farms, but no one’s letting down their guard. I tried to get hold of Eli, but him and his whole militia have gone to ground. We sent Grace Hudson up to see what’s going on, since she’s the only one of us who’d been there before. No word yet.”

It had been three days. Rook pressed the button. “You said someone was sick.”

“Yeah. We had to lock up Carl. He’s screaming and carrying on like he’s out of his goddamn mind. Like Angels, but not Bitten.”

Like Angels, but not.

Rook closed his eyes. “Red eyes? Weird veins?”

Mary May sounded relieved – _The Deputy_ (the Sinner) knew, who helped them. Rook, and the trajectory of his life. “Yeah. It’s got his wife, too. They’re real bad. We thought it was just folk in town until we heard some peggies have got it too, so Rook, we gotta know – is it them?”

Them. One word for four Seeds. What a bargain.

Rook had to think about, seconds he wasn’t sure he had left of privacy. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “The cult’s treating it like a virus. Or at least pretending to around me. But peggies have been hit hard with it. They’ve got them in quarantine and they’re testing avenues of infection, but they’re keeping it quiet. Could be lying. Could also just be trying to avoid a panic. My instinct is they’re trying to keep it contained.”

Mary May made a noise. Almost lost to static, the drumming of the rain outside.

Rook frowned. “May?”

“You sure that’s what they’re doing?” she asked reluctantly.

Rook held the radio up to his mouth,

(blood dried-pooled on the floor, a Rorschach of it in the woods)

and asked, “May, what’s happened?”

The silence of a radio dormant was heavier than a silence without one. The long pause before, “we didn’t want to tell you, Rook,” she said. “Dutch told us not to. But you’ve got a right to know. You just have to promise that,”

Rook’s door swung open, “you won’t do anything crazy,” and then John was in the doorway, a curious look on his face.

“Who are you talking to?”

His gaze fell on the radio.

“—Rook, are you still there?”

Rook put the transceiver down carefully.

John looked at it for a long, long moment, face gone blank. “Who are you talking to?” he repeated. He took one slow step, then another. Reached the bed and touched the cord to the transceiver with his fingertips, looking down at it.

Nodded. “‘Trust’,” John echoed, a cruel slant to his mouth just as Mary May said _Rook?_ and then it all happened at once. John yanked on the power cord and almost sent the radio flying – Rook grabbed it and pulled it back, ducked when John lunged.

“I wasn’t – John, listen!” Rook didn’t catch it a second time; John shoved the radio off the bed in a clatter of metal and electronic parts, dove for him. “Wait!” Rook exclaimed, grabbing his hand before it could _gouge out his fucking eyes_ , “it’s not—”

“You _traitor_!” John snarled.

“I’m not!” Rook tried to roll them and John just dug his knee into the mattress, used the leverage to elbow Rook right in the jaw. Weaker than Rook, less experienced but holding the advantage because Rook didn’t want to hurt him and John had no such qualms.

“How long have you been talking to them?!” John demanded, thumb digging savagely into Rook’s windpipe. Rook twisted his wrist and shoved him back. John hit the bed and rolled, mad as a cut snake and twice as venomous, lashed out to get Rook’s ribs with his knee.

“I wanted to – I don’t _know_ anything!” He got a hold of John’s wrist and slammed it into the bedframe, the howl of pain quickly muffled by Rook’s hand over John’s mouth.

John bit him. He bit him so hard that Rook’s hand spasmed, that it hurt more than his broken fucking nose had and Rook yanked it back, John drew breath but didn’t scream, he snarled, “you’re _ours_ ,” and rolled them, ended up sitting on Rook’s chest with his hair falling in his face, eyes wild and mouth blood-tinged from the wound throbbing on Rook’s hand. Rook threw his arm up in anticipation of a blow,

“I was just fucking _worried_!”

and John’s legs were in too tight against Rook’s ribs, made it painful to breathe but John didn’t have the same issue; he pressed his hands into the mattress either side of Rook’s head, leaned over him (blood-copper) panting. Searching his face desperately, suspicion and anger and something, something.

“You’re not _theirs_ ,” he hissed.

Rook shook his head. His eyes felt too open, too wide, heart pounding in his ears. “I wasn’t telling them anything, John,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

John’s lip curled. “Who was it?!”

“It was my friend,” Rook replied.

“Your friend in the _resistance_!”

“John,” so good an imitation of calm it could seem real. “I came willingly. I chose to be here, I don’t need to escape,” and something relaxing, just a little, in John. Hands curled less convulsively into the sheets by Rook’s head, but still not where he needed to be.

“You’re talking to the enemy,” John said, mean but not certain.

“No,” Rook repeated, lifted his hands carefully to show them empty, harmless. “I don’t have information for them, I’m not leaving. They’re not my enemy, they’re my friends. They’re hurting.”

John’s breathing wasn’t steady. Rook could feel it, hear it for the age it took him to search his face for whatever it would take to reassure him. Simmering, the threat of the radio safely fucking obliterated and Rook, right there.

John, who couldn’t lose things.

“You’re not,” John repeated, made it a question.

“No.”

“You’re _not_ ,” John said again, voice raised, and Rook shook his head.

“I’m not. I’m not—”

and John stole the words from his mouth, pressed a kiss hard to his lips and bit, “good,” into him, swallowed his surprised inhale.

Rook shoved him back after a moment, gripped him by the shoulders. “John!”

John hissed at him, hit the mattress by his head just once, a frustrated snap. “What?!” he demanded, and Rook didn’t have an answer. Air made of their breathing. The rain, and wind. The radio’s dying crackle where it lay against the wall. “Why can’t we, I’m for _you_ ,”

and Rook was winded again, John just dragged it out of him,

“so fucking _have_ me,” a killing blow and John was ramping up, sliding sideways into a rant when Rook reached up to touch his stupidly pretty fucking face, the redness Rook had knocked into his cheek.

“No. You’re for you,” Rook said, firm like houses on sand, sliding out to sea.

“No,” John said, stream-blue and sure, hating to repeat himself, “ _wrong_.” Eyes going dark, something ugly in his mouth. “Is it because of Jacob?” asked deadly, distorted. “He touches you once and now you want to _choose_?” like it was a curse, and Rook thought for a second John meant the audacity of autonomy before he saw it was the insult of just choosing _one_ , of picking some _one_ and _not_ John and helplessly he just said,

“I don’t,” and John looked at him cracked open the way he hadn’t been before. Flayed by the radio, Rook’s one secret, broken on the floor, leaned down slow-watchful. Rook not breathing because what was this, this wasn’t what they had been _talking about_ but his heart still pounding, adrenaline for a fight that was over.

John kissed him sweet like he’d be pushed away and Rook,

didn’t.

He fell into it easy and John pulled him to sit up with him, straddling his lap again. He moaned into his mouth when Rook wrapped his arms around him, slid his hand up his shirt for warm skin and he clutched at him, pressed harder and meaner and twisted around him until Rook couldn’t catch his breath, until his blood was running him ragged and John was pulling at his shirt, grinding down in his lap.

“Off, off, off,” John was saying, chanting, yanking at it when Rook didn’t move fast enough and shoving it up. He grinned bright-savage when it was gone and he could see him ( _pride_ and _wrath_ and scars for days), palmed Rook’s stomach, scraped his teeth across his collarbone. He seized the button to his pants next, wouldn’t stay still (wouldn’t stay down) and,

“So many fucking _layers_ ,” John hissed, Rook’s hip stung where he snapped the waistband against him, hand slid down the front to cup him without preamble. Rook made a choked noise and jerked upwards, thighs straining.

He scrabbled at John’s shirt, John stretched above him while John scowled down at his pants and who the fuck wore a button down at home, “who fucking invited you,” he growled at it and John laughed, high and delighted, didn’t help at all but yelped when Rook gave up and tore it instead, buttons rolling. He hadn’t looked before but lines he could barely focus on were inked into John’s lean chest, shading of images he didn’t recognise but that made him up, scars and the vandalism of his sins and Rook didn’t know where to touch first, he was rendered helpless by freedom,

he was _allowed_ ,

and he moaned, licked across John’s chest to see his stomach jump. “You’re so fucking _pretty_ ,” he said, he complained but John _shuddered_ so,

yeah, okay.

“Is that what you want?” Rook asked, tilted his head up to look at John over him, pupils blown dark. Kissed his chest once, eyes open. “To be good for me, John.”

John stared for a moment. Spoke with a voice ground down to gravel. “I want,” he said slowly, carefully, “your fucking _pants off_ ,” and he got it done, shed the remains of his shirt and yanked his own tailored pants off to crawl over Rook again, miles and miles of him and kissing him, over and over and turning to kiss his palm when Rook touched his cheek.

“What do you want?” he asked, he sucked two of Rook’s fingers into his mouth slick and suggestive and Rook couldn’t think, he could only watch for a second before the thought finished,

and he shook his head, “I’m not going to last,” and John whined when he pulled his hand away to wrap it around his dick instead, a tight pull that earned him a full-body shudder, a noise barely human and his spine arching long until he collapsed in on himself again, fell to the side and pulled Rook on top of him to settle between his legs, to hiss when it brought their groins together.

John yanked his head down, “next time,” before he kissed him and Rook just adjusted his grip because he couldn’t say the words. John was making helpless little noises as he stroked him, writhing until it was hard to keep a hold of him, until Rook had to shift his weight back and press his forearm to John’s chest to hold him _still_ and felt his dick twitch in his hand, thick and heavy and another spurt of precum.

“ _Oh_ ,” Rook said, caught in pieces sliding together, and John glared at him, flushed red and a fucking mess and pinned like a butterfly.

“Don’t you dare,” he snarled, he thought Rook was going to _stop_ and Rook bared his teeth, pressed down harder across his clavicle.

“I won’t,” he promised, jerked him faster and licked across his mouth. “I’m here, come on,” and John wrapped his legs around him to cling tighter when he hit a rhythm that made his vision blur. _Fuck_ and _please_ and their voices overlapping, Rook pressing their cocks together in his grip to stroke clumsy-rough but enough, surrounded by sweat and skin and John, kissing the air out of him when he could lift his head enough to do it.

He was beautiful, head tossed back and the flush rising up his chest and Rook blurted it out without thinking, got a shudder that shook the thought loose for him to say, “ _yes_ ,” and John grabbed at him bruise-tight, wailed as he came suddenly, come streaking his chest and spine a perfect curve. Rook licked across the scrollwork _YES_ on John’s chest, tasted salt and come and John’s hands pushed at him, pulled at his hair, groped at him to drag him up into a kiss uncaring of where his mouth had been.

“You,” John slurred, half-dazed but reached down between them and fisted his hand around Rook’s dick, stroked him just too-hard. “Now you,” but Rook shook his head,

“I can’t,” because it was too much but he couldn’t stop moving, he _wanted_ to and John was there, warm and strong and wrapped around him like he couldn’t let go if he wanted to.

“You can,” John promised, dug his heels into Rook’s lower back to urge him on, to fuck his fist, teeth against his neck. “You can, come for me,” and he must have been right because Rook did, his vision almost whited out when it crashed over him and he ground down hard into John one last time, collapsed onto his elbows and gasped for air.

John carded his hands through his hair and let him stay on his chest, just moved a little in place so Rook was more squarely between his knees. There was a lot of Rook. He remembered that when his limbs came back to him, all of him pressed against John and a _lot_ , probably making it hard to breathe but John held him tighter when he tried to move, held on like he was holding him together.

 

 

It worked, for a while.

 

 

John aggressively moved him into a position he liked afterwards, shoved him to the corner of the mattress that still had the sheet on it and settled with his head on Rook’s shoulder, hand on his breastbone and ear over his heart. Legs tangled together and Rook was too dazed to argue, relaxed into it while the sweat cooled on his skin and the sound of rain filtered back in.

It was peace until it wasn’t, until it settled beyond it into something that made Rook feel old. Something high-whining gone quiet and him, the youngest person in the house but carbon-layered ancient, stores and stores of it condensed into a quiet thought with an almost audible _click_.

A deal offered every three hours, Mary May and Dutch and things they wouldn’t tell him.

Rook, questions pouring out until his throat closed.

“John,” he asked, because he couldn’t wait any longer. Days and days spent Not Asking, the question circling his brain so distantly he hadn’t even heard it. “Who got sick first?”

John closed his eyes.

“You wouldn’t have said yes if you’d known.”

Rook was still playing idly with John’s hair and he couldn’t stop, just twisting dark hair around his fingers to feel it. Quiet, quiet. “I don’t want to,” he whispered. “But I have to know.”

The shape of what knowing meant filling between them, quiet thoughts strained to breaking.

“You’ll leave,” John said, sure of that too.

“Is it that bad?” Rook’s voice made tentative, and he knew it was. He knew and he didn’t want it, he asked because he had to. Rook always did what he had to – wanting never mattered.

John splayed one tattooed hand on Rook’s chest, kissed his shoulder (teeth pressed together) and shook his head. Eyes too bright. Said nothing.

“John,” Rook said, the rain turning to storm outside. “Tell me,”

and he did.

 

 

 _Should you choose_ , Joseph had said to him once.

What a fucking joke.

 

 

John didn’t stop him when Rook got dressed, silently. Mechanically. He didn’t say a goddamn word, just swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sat with his head in his hands. Rook went downstairs and packed a knife, a bag, and a reusable flask of water. A tangle of rope and the little waterproof radio went into a side compartment. He could have taken more but he didn’t, he didn’t want anything of theirs.

A truck pulled up while he adjusted Boomer’s collar, powered his phone all the way down. Windscreen wiper metronome going, the peggie rushing around with an umbrella for Faith, for Rachel Jessop, her feet bare in the mud and her dress pristine.

Joseph got out the other side in the rain. He didn’t seem to care as it flecked his sunglasses, came down on his preacher’s vest. Ruined everything. “Rook,” Joseph greeted as he walked up, boots splashing in the forming puddles, warm and hands lifting to reach for him, then,

the strap of the bag on Rook’s shoulder. Peaches at his side. The knife strapped to his hip.

Joseph’s head, tilting. “Rook,” he said again. Came to a stop a few feet from the steps.

Rook stood. “Joseph,” and a nod to Faith, her hand against Joseph’s side, _uncertain_ spelled in touch and the patter of rain on her umbrella.

Rook stepped off the porch. Almost got past him before Joseph caught his arm, ungentle. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m leaving.”

Joseph turned his head; a shadow under ice. “Are you?” he asked.

Faith stopped touching him.

“Let go,” Rook said. Raw, ungentle too.

He didn’t. Joseph and his tight grip, eyes gone flat-cold. “We’re going to talk about this.”

It might have been funny, another time. Joseph Seed and conflict resolution. But no one laughed. “No,” Rook replied. “We’re not.”

Joseph shook his head. “We have been patient,” testing, like he was running through a list of what would drive Rook away, had sat and thought about what it would take. “We haven’t touched the county.”

Truth on a technicality, John the lawyer’s fingerprints all over it. But it wasn’t a courtroom, so, “I know what you did,” Rook told him. “The three of you. I know about Joey. And Staci.”

Even the cold leeched from Joseph’s face. Black hole, dead-star stillness under running water. “Do you?” he asked, so softly it almost wasn’t.

Peaches brushed against Rook’s leg, ears pricked. She knew Joseph. But Rook was trying so hard to be calm, and she knew what that meant too. “You lied to me,” he said and maybe he wasn’t trying at all because his voice was deep-strange, came from further down than just angry. They’d lied to him but he hadn’t trusted them, yet. It shouldn’t have mattered. But it was _yet_ , frozen over and three letters stuck in him, over and over, burrowing deeper inwards. Grass seeds and Boomer. Rook and _yet._

Joseph shook his head. “We never lied to you. We returned them, they aren’t contagious, we weren’t the ones who made them _sick,_ ”

“But you sent them _back_ that way!” Rook snapped, jerking his arm free. “You sent them back to die, to _see_ if they were contagious! I had _wondered_ ,” stepping forward, making use of tall and strong and big to crowd Joseph back, “how John had known to start the quarantine so early. But it was because he already had Joey locked up, wasn’t it,” He dropped his bag to have his hands free. It landed with a wet thud. “He had eyes on her and he knew the _second_ she got sick. And you knew you had a problem, that your leverage had an expiration date, _that_ was when you all came together, made your deal and your fucking plans!” and Joseph wasn’t calm anymore, the storm had burrowed into him and made ozone of his breath but Rook wasn’t done. He put a hand on Joseph’s chest and shoved, felt the thunder living there. “You didn’t know they weren’t contagious,” Rook accused, he attacked, he should have _known_ , “and you let them out there with innocent people because they meant _nothing_ , the people they could have infected were _nothing_ —”

“They were nothing in exchange for _you_!” Joseph had never raised his voice to Rook before, but he shouted then. Projection and power and a voice made for rallying raised in rage, the lines of him slashed hard into the world.

“I was just an _excuse!_ ” Rook shouted back and he couldn’t project like Joseph but he wasn’t fucking _talking_ to God, his human lungs would do just fine (taking in water). “They couldn’t be prisoners so you _wanted_ to let them go, sent them out there to see what would happen, to get the dying fucking heathens away from your goddamn _followers_!”

Joseph fisted his hand in Rook’s shirt ( _Joseph stop!_ and Faith’s wide eyes) _._ “You were _everything_ ,” he gritted out, “you have no idea what we _sacrificed_ for you,” like it was a reminder for both of them but Rook wouldn’t have it – something, something, _something for_

“Nothing!” Rook ripped free, felt the neck of his shirt tear. “You traded me for _nothing_!”

Joseph let out a noise, the air-gone noise of man stabbed, all the breath out of him at once to rattle the windows of the house, tearing branches off trees. “You can’t see because you don’t know how to be _loved_ ,”

and he didn’t get it, he didn’t understand who Rook was mad at – himself in the kitchen, in the field with Jacob, the bed with John and in the bathroom shaking when he was seventeen _fucking_ years old,

“I wanted to _trust_ you!” Rook shouted, he screamed, he let himself down. “I loved you all my life and you made me _nothing_!”

and then then Joseph shouted back, he said it, lashed out with Rook’s name, the one his mother gave him and they called at the doctor’s, his _real name_ , the first time he’d ever said it and lightning crackling in his mouth. A word for the private core of Rook spat electric, blisters from a name no one ever called him anymore.

It ended the argument. It was a word of endings. Rook pushed him away blindly, too hard and blinked rain out of his eyes because it was just the rain, it was just the rain and Joseph said it again, quieter.

 

 

Rook left.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from a Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out by Richard Siken, though I recommend Smoke by Daughter as your lovely second half soundtrack.
> 
> Also I've been distracted by writing "Rook investigates missing persons and Joseph got turned into a fucking snake" because of Littlebiscuits, _you did this to me_.


	22. i promise you, i'm gonna let you down

Rook had gotten used to being warm. The bad weather reminded him why he shouldn’t have.

Staying off the main roads, it took hours, it took until after dark to get to Fall’s End. The streetlights on the way had long died and the thunderclouds hid any natural light that would have helped. In the end, he saw the light from the buildings when he crested the rise before the valley proper, squinting at his compass with his hand cupped over his lighter to see. Cold. Wet. The bitemarks John had left in his hand throbbing whenever he brushed it against something. He tried not to think about it. He killed a peggie for his rifle, his torch, a better radio, and that helped.

Killing helped. Fuck his life.

He went for the Spread Eagle when he hit the town limits. Got in through the back door when the bar was already closed for the night and made Mary May shriek when he said hello from behind her. He had to dodge the bottle she hurled reflexively, steered Boomer away from the glass while she stared and caught her breath, Rook there dripped rainwater onto the floor.

“Rook?”

He spread his hands. “Surprise,”

and she decked him.

 

 

“You disappeared!”

“I did.”

“Just cut out, I thought you got _caught_!”

“I—”

“And there are peggie air patrols going again, what’s that about?!”

“May.”

“Don’t you _May_ me, you son of a bitch!” She looked like she wanted to punch him again. Fair enough. There was still stress tightening the skin around her eyes, her mouth. He’d gone missing. She’d been worried.

It occurred to him, while she paced, that he hadn’t told Jacob he was leaving. Rook wondered how he’d take it (Jacob’s throat in his hand) before returning to the room. May was calming, wearing herself out. He waited until she was taking full breaths between sentences to try again. “May,” he said, and she looked at him. Properly. Really. “How are they?”

and that was a different kind of tired entirely.

 

 

They met up with Jerome on the way – had to, the church was the repurposed space for the reds. Carl. His wife, Ashley.

Hudson.

Staci was with Eli, or had been before the Whitetail Militia went to ground. There’d been no updates. Not for weeks. The church had been divided by hasty made wooden walls, bolted into place at the bases, barely tall enough to reach Rook’s head, but probably enough in a pinch. The walls had been stuffed with sheets on the inside, and there was a woman sobbing quietly from the one nearest the door. He walked into the small boxed-off room Jerome directed him to, passed Gregory, the only nurse in town.

Joey looked like hell. They’d done their best – she was clean, fed, warm, - but she was sitting against the wall of the church, cotton gloves tied on. From the gouges down her arms, they hadn’t had much choice.

She recognised Rook when he knelt down in front of her, red-red eyes focusing on him, the light of recognition. It was more than he’d expected.

“Hey, Rook,” she said. It sounded painful. Her voice, her lips were cracked. He smiled at her.

“You look like shit, Joey.”

She wheezed a laugh, kicked out at him weakly. “I’m fucking stunning, dick.” He caught her foot, tugged it lightly before he gently placed it back on the floor. “It comes and goes,” she told him when she caught him looking at the red webbing at her ankle, the hurting veins in her joints, the creases of her eyes.

“You’re different,” Rook observed. “Lucid. The others went crazy, didn’t come back,” he found himself adding, like she wouldn’t know.

Joey didn’t seem offended, or scared. “There’s that too,” she said, flicked her eyes to her arms. Gloves tied on.

“Joey,” he said gently. “What do you remember about getting sick?”

She shrugged, winced. “I just felt wrong one day. In the bunker.”

“No one was with you?” he pressed. “You weren’t give anything?”

“Canned food,” she said, shaking her head. “Alone. Alone for,” she swallowed. “Alone,” she repeated again.

She was going. She was leaving him, eyes fogging over – he didn’t have long. “Did John tell you anything about it?” he asked. “Say anything?”

She shook her head again, then stopped. Screwed her forehead up, like thinking hurt. “Rook,” she said, and Rook glanced at Jerome. “He wants Rook.” She winced when her hands twitched, an internal flinch reverberating. “The rookie, he wants Rook,” getting louder.

There was no easy way, so Rook just said it plainly. “Joey. It’s your soulmate, right?” _beautiful_ and John, flayed open, “it’s blocking them.”

Joey didn’t answer right away. She looked at him, slowly paling. It was like some vacuum in her was pulling inwards, hollowing her cheeks, her eyelids, draining the blood away.

Taking her somewhere else.

“My soulmates?” she asked. Jerome put his hand on Rook’s shoulder.

“Time to go,” and Joey looked between them, pupils getting wider, gaze less focused.

“I don’t,” she started, and stopped. Her forehead creased. “Where?” She looked at the floor, the walls, and Jerome walked Rook out as Gregory stepped in, as Joey’s voice rose to a cry.

 

 

He’d been right. Whatever was wrong with them, it cut them off. Bites without scars. A county going mad in living like him.

 

Fine.

 

 

Rook was tired down to the bone but his marrow had long turned to anger, and it gave him the energy to stand over a map of the county in the bar, to talk about next stepped.

“Preppers have it worst,” Jerome told him. “We’ve got four reports of bodies found in bunkers.”

Rook frowned. “They should be the least vulnerable, they’ve all gone into lockdown.”

Jerome nodded. “Locked up, sanitary rations – they should have been fine. But people in town have been fine, except for Carl. And to be frank, who knows where he’s been.”

“Peggies have it bad,” Rook mused. “Dozens. Some in quarantine as controls and they still got it. Only the Unbitten, but the Seeds couldn’t see a pattern. Or hadn’t, when they last talked about it.”

Jerome took his glasses off, rubbed his face. “Perfect.”

Rook gestured at the map, the rows of small black blocks at the periphery of the county. A perimeter of dark rectangles. “These are new. Talk to me about them.”

Mary May leaned forward. “We tried to breach the peggie roadblocks when the deal was made. Me and Nick Rye, the pilot? We came up against serious firepower. Fully equipped, well organised. Dressed in black, black vans. Real suspicious, but not like normal peggies. Come across them?”

Rook shook his head. “Jacob’s hunters wear red and black,” he replied. “Got their cross on them in red. Sound right?”

Mary May winced. “No. Just black, no sign of their stupid cross anywhere.”

Jerome took over. “These guys are unmarked, militant. Disciplined. We tried to scatter some and they responded,” not _reacted_ , “like trained men. We’d heard from Eli that was more Jacob’s style. The Seeds never mentioned…”

He trailed off when Mary May cleared her throat.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” Jerome offered. Stilted. Well-meaning.

Rook looked at him. The jukebox crooned out Aaron Neville ( _tell it like it is_ ) and the rain hit the metal roof, endless. “They didn’t mention any black ops squads. I’m positive.”

Mary May growled. “Great. The goddamn men in black have the county locked down even _more_ and soulmates are losing it,” she said with disgust.

“Eli had the best intel on the cult’s fighting strength,” Rook remembered. “Heard from Grace yet? She’s the one you sent, yeah?”

May shook her head. “Last we heard, Eli had a lead on the reds, but they were stretched thin. It’s why we sent Grace, but the ceasefire didn’t sit well with the militia.”

Stretched thin _._

“They didn’t attack Jacob, did they?” The question made Jerome and May trade glances, but it wasn’t protectiveness – Rook knew Jacob, just a little. A ceasefire didn’t mean disarming, defanging. He’d kill to protect what he had, without hesitation. Organised and merciless, Jacob Seed the fucking hurricane.

“We don’t know,” Jerome said eventually. “Grace might have gotten bogged down by the storm, we should hear from her tomorrow. If Eli found something out about the reds, we need to know about it.”

Rook nodded, then paused in thought. “There’s a doctor. Sampson. John’s main medical source. If we can get him, we’ll know whatever the cult’s learned about the problem.”

Jerome smiled, a godly man’s satisfaction and light reflecting from his glasses when he braced himself forward on the table.

“Tell me about him.”

 

 

Jerome would take care of locating Sampson, it was decided. Rook was too obvious, and they weren’t sure if the peggies would be out in force after he’d left, the deal (and so much) broken. What Rook himself would be doing would wait until morning, it was decided when he started to sway on his feet, caked up to his knees in mud and red-eyed, exhausted. He took a cold shower while Mary May made up a bed for him in the attic again, too short but warm and dry. It was familiar enough that the last weeks seemed unreal when he looked at it in the corner. A single mattress with a fitted sheet, a pile of blankets and all of it by the skylight, high enough he couldn’t be seen unless he was actively looking out of it.

 _Look, and here we resume_ without a pause.

Rook had slept on beds too small for him all his life, but he looked at it and his throat felt tight. He dragged Peaches onto the mattress that was too short and Boomer curled up by his feet, and it wasn’t enough space for all three of them. He’d only fit once and it had been clever, he made it uncharitable, he made it a trick when he turned it in his head. It had been clever make that place warm, and safe, to infuse complicated memories with simple feelings, what the body would remember when the mind had too much to process easily. Body-memory, nerves without morality and should-haves.

Rook punched the pillow to make himself more comfortable (should have, should have),

should have fucking left that house before the rain set in and the chill followed, what the _fuck_ Rook, and he buried his face in Boomer’s shoulder to block it out. Woke a few hours later with savage leg cramps, had to struggle out to stretch while his body craved standing up straight. Body-memory of something else, something better.

When he got back to sleep, he woke in front of the wall for the first time in weeks. Still, untouchable, the world behind it on fire. Colours, muffled noises. Like Jacob’s nightmares but _howling_ , not calmed by the presence of Joseph still in the centre; made worse for it and it was wrong, he couldn’t take the noise and the light and he screamed himself awake, Boomer barking in surprised hysterics when he clawed his way out of the dark and back into the attic, heard feet thudding up the stairs.

The next morning, before he left to talk next steps with Jerome, Mary May pressed a pill bottle into his hand and Rook was a grown-ass man, more than most, but gratitude broke his heart with a sound like a sigh.

“What about you?” he asked, voice rough.

Mary May waved him off. “I’d like to see her try something,” she said, lifted her chin. “I’m not a scared teenager anymore, she can come the fuck at me,” and Rook loved her just a little in that moment.

 

 

 

 

Rook’s radio stayed silent of the following days. The familiar scenery of Fall’s End rendered surreal without the sound of the shortwave, the static punctuating threats, idle comments and the invasive kind of curiosity of

(John, sitting with his head in his hands)

others, without even the regular check-ins from Dutch. Rook kept busy. Helped coordinate barricades, left untended while the cult had withdrawn, while they’d rebuilt the fucking _clinic_ in town. He kept busy and he took his pills and it was numbing, something just better enough.

Busy and three days later, they’d heard nothing from Grace. They’d heard nothing at all, and an enormous white wolf dragged Davey screaming from the grocery store back door, had torn him apart before Jerome could put it down.

“Wolves,” Jerome asked incredulously, shotgun comfortably tucked in the crook of his elbow. He prodded it with his foot, its damp fur plastered down where he touched it. Four shots at close rang to slow it down – six to kill, the side of its skull gone to shotgun shell and mouth drooped open in death. The dried remains of Davey still slick-red around its mouth. “We don’t get wolves in the valley.”

Rook crouched, tilted what was left of its head. Blood was dried in a cross down its face ( _only you_ ) and seeping pink with water down the side of its muzzle with the puddle it had collapse in. Rook’s phone in his back pocket, GPS disabled and power off.

“Expect more,” he said.

“More? That’s the biggest wolf I’ve ever seen.” Jerome, sceptical where Eli would have agreed. Eli, who’d known something then disappeared.

Rook stood. “That’s Jacob Seed.”

The other lookout, who’d failed to see the Judge, saw Rook just fine. He looked at him That Way – the deputy, The Deputy who’d set the county on fire.

Who’d traded himself to the Seeds, returned and brought the wolves with him.

Rook looked at the ground, made soft by the rain and drowned grass. The Judge walked lightly, but it had big fucking feet, was too well fed to have just walked from the Whitetails.

“There’ll be a handler nearby,” Rook said, leaning back and grabbing a spare box of ammunition from the store shelf, reloading his new rifle. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Boomer investigated the site; the rain had eased for a few hours, which would be enough to point him in the right direction, unless it picked up again. It was going to, the sky looked like a bad week already, but he barked sharply and raced off into the fields, towards the distant forest across the river. Rook shouldered his rifle and set off after him at an easy jog.

 

 

The Judge hadn’t come from the Whitetails, but it had come a long fucking way. It had crossed the river, fast flowing and glutted with rain, muddied with debris washed down the mountain. Boomer lost the trail there just because it was too fast to cross, hovered and whined on the slippery riverbank. They’d have to go up to the bridge a few miles up to find it again, risk the road.

It felt good to stretch his legs again, to settle into the persistence-hunting stride humans had evolved for. Boomer led the way.

 

 

The rain picked up around dusk, set itself to torrents when the wind changed or eased to flecks that came down buffeted by wind, a constant ebb and flow until it settled into a downpour after dark. Being outside, in the drizzle and the downpour, the sleet and the fucking mud, was a relief. It soaked in and it was cold, it was _uncomfortable_ and that was stimuli, that was messages he could reprogram himself with. Peaches caught up when Rook was forced off the empty road by a rapid-flowing flood of water, two trucks crashed into each other in the middle with the Eden’s Gate symbol on the side. A flash-flood in the dip of earth, water pouring from the mountain that he almost walked into with only his pathetic fucking torch to light the way, almost carried him off the way it had stopped the trucks.

Fucking Montana mountains. No idea how to handle their rain.

Rook almost got thrown in a second time when Peaches headbutted him aggressively in the knees, looking bedraggled and miserable. And tired, sick of being left behind and needy over the last few days, curled up on him whenever he sat alone (alone, alone) and hovering over him anxiously if he slept too long.

“Sorry, baby,” he said, let her growl at him. Boomer barked and Rook followed him into the trees, flashlight darting between the trees. After a hundred metres or so he found his boy again, wagging his tail proudly.

A black van had come off the road, ended up on its side well into the trees. Rain making mud of the crooked tracks, the whole thing battered from bouncing off trees until it was left on its side. Headlights shining out onto the loves, bushes that had brought it to a halt, the other light broken. Rook scanned, gave a low whistle for Boomer, who gave no warning for hostiles. Or squirrels, obviously just as important. Rook lifted his rifle to brace the stock against his shoulder and kept out of the headlight glare to keep his night-eyes, approached the back, through the red glow from damaged taillights.

The back was a mess when he opened it, lit it with his stolen torch. A gurney had topped over, tilted by the crushed wall, water puddling in it from the breaks in the far side letting water in. A body bag was strapped to it and an arm, part of a shoulder had come out, dappled with red-dead veins. The arm had been broken, half-crushed and sick-bent, an arm the wrong shape with too many bends in it.

A red peggie in a body bag. Rook frowned. He climbed over the sideways gurney towards the front. The driver was crushed between the wheel and the seat, almost cut in half from the collapsed connect. His neck was broken, his head floppy from the broken support when Rook felt for a pulse. He wasn’t quite room temperature, still a little warm, and he was clean shaven, dressed in high quality black fatigues. Not a peggie.

After rummaging, braving himself on the glove box to reach into the man’s pockets, the dash, Rook found not ID. No papers in the crumpled compartments, the glovebox when he shifted off it. Nothing.

Rook sat back on his haunches.

A man without identification in an unmarked van, driving late at night with a dead red peggie in the back. Without a full tank of gas, when Rook checked, so to within the county unless he had a fuel source. Fuel being almost exclusively controlled by the peggies, except where Rook had clawed it back.

Rook didn’t fucking like it.

He also didn’t like his odds of finding it again, of being able to find his tracks after the weather cleared. However fucking long that would take. He didn’t have his camera, though.

 

He did have his phone.

 

Rook fished it out of his side pocket, looked at it for a long moment, crouching in the crashed van, braced on a gurney. He looked at the phone for a long moment.

He’d turned the GPS off. Deleted the blank app he fucking knew was a way in, somehow. Even if they’d cloned the phone, he wasn’t going to call anyone. It was just the camera. Three days of a blank screen. Of silence.

He pressed his thumb to the power button, watched the screen light up. Squinted, thumbed across to the camera quickly, trying to outpace it hooking up to the towers again.

He’d gotten a shot of each side of the van, the open back and the peggie’s mottled face before it started going off, a backlog of communication. He silenced it but the alerts rolled in while he climbed through to the front, snapshots of attention.

**Missed Call: Jacob (2)**

**Missed Call: Joseph**

**Jacob  
** _where are you_

 **Jacob** _  
what did I say about the fucking phone_

**Voicemail: New Message (3)**

**Missed Call: Jacob (3)**

**Missed Call: Joseph (2)**

**Voicemail: New Message (6)**

He got a clear shot of the driver’s face, lifted him by the hair to manage it and levered him free enough to snap his gear before the phone rang.

 **Incoming Call: Jacob** , who was too fucking good at technology, who of course had cloned the phone and seen messages arrive.

Rook hit _ignore_ (river-heavy hands) and their names just kept coming up, he kept seeing their  _fucking_ names ( _all my life and you_ ) and he climbed out of the van, held down the power and waited for the phone to turn off.

**Missed Call: Jacob**

**Jacob  
** _don’t you fucking dare_

and then it was over. Rook put the phone, checked his compass in the taillight glow. Stood there in the rain, dripping down the back of his neck and Boomer trying to shake it off and sending even more water everywhere.

No, he didn’t like it.

Three days since he’d left the house. Three days without word from Grace, the best sharpshooter in town. Three days of missed calls, of men in black vans.

“Someone has to clean up this fucking mess,” he muttered, and turned for the Whitetails instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starring John: an uncharacteristic restraint. 
> 
> Chapter title from Break Your Heart by Shelby Merry.


	23. everyone wants a battlefield

  

 

When Rook got there, almost a day later in the frigid fucking cold, the door to Eli’s bunker was hanging open. Water was dripping down through the hatch, made a metallic echo where it puddled below.

Eden’s Gate branded the bunkers they took. Every inch they claimed. But Eli might have abandoned it if Jacob found them, got too close, ceasefire or not. Wouldn’t live with wolves digging, claws scraping at his door.

If he’d left of his own free well, he’d have left traps.

Rook looked apologetically at Boomer and Peaches. “Stay,” he ordered, and clipped the torch to his shirt, climbed down the ladder into the dark.

The water in the entryway was up to his ankles when he got down there. It had spilled over the raised lip of the doorway and his torch showed how it spilled into the hall.

The bunker was meant to seal completely, and it was pitch black. The lights were controlled by the switch near his elbow, just inside the door, but Rook didn’t touch it. Something made him walk on with just his torch, he kept his footfalls light and poised to stalk.

The maps in the radio room were torn down, pieces of equipment missing and others destroyed. Personal effects were missing from the improvised barracks, and the remnants of a fire, charred scraps of paper were in the furnace. There was a powerful smell of damp and the dripping echoed, layered over itself. Eli’s planning room was a disaster. The table was thrown up against the far wall, pressed un the door handle to Tammy’s room of pain. A few of the monitors were cracked, blank. Others lit the room in black-white shadows, rotating views through cameras.

When Rook’s torch passed over the floor by the bank of monitors, he stopped. Crouched to push scattered papers aside, to see the letters scratched shallow-fast into the concrete floor.

_RED_

and an arrow, jagged and pointed towards the torture room. He hadn’t found any bodies yet. But Rook knew a slaughter when he saw one, and there was blood in the air. He crossed to the door, to the table holding it shut.

Listened.

When he heard nothing, Rook exchanged his rifle for his pistol and held it low, hooked his foot around a table leg and slowly drew it away from the door. It scraped loud, long, a screech amongst _dripdops_ in the dark.

The door didn’t fly open – a lifetime of horror movie jump-scares had told him to expect it, but it didn’t move until he touched it. Rook was forced to consider it might actually be a snake in there. It was the sort of thing Eli would do.

Rook opened the door quickly, stepped back.

Nothing came out; walked or slithered. Rook stepped in, cleared the doorway with academy precision. The chair they’d strapped a hunter to sat empty, the metal tub below it devoid of water.

There was a body lying by the far wall.

It was a woman in black fatigues, face down. Rook nudged her with his foot.

Nothing.

He kept his gun pointed at her, but crouched and pressed for a pulse at her neck.

Still nothing. Already cold. He flipped her, a task made difficult by rigor, and studied her face. Mottled blue-grey where blood had pooled in death. Jaw open, tongue swollen and dry-white coated. Eyes clouded and it looked –

honestly,

it looked like _dehydration_ , like she’d been locked there and left to dry out. There were bottles of water though, spilled out and puddled on the floor, caps rolled off. It didn’t make sense for her to have done it herself but it felt all wrong for Eli – he wasn’t the man to pour water on the floor then leave the prisoner to die of thirst.

Well. Tammy, maybe. He wasn’t sure.

He checked the woman’s pockets and found exactly what he’d found thus far already – fucking _nothing_ for a woman who died slow ( _RED_ ) of thirst while water pooled on the ground.

Rook reached for his pocket and touched his phone.

He should take pictures ( _don’t you fucking dare_ ) and the bunker was a deadzone for signal, as good as a faraday cage. He stood instead – he had to clear the bunker first.

 

 

Empty. There was blood dried in splashes in the improvised first aid room, enough for the metallic smell to linger in the back of his throat, enough for him to wonder about a body that he didn’t find. They’d left in a hurry, burnt what identifying papers they couldn’t carry. No sign of Grace, of Staci, much less of Eli. Rook reviewed what he knew for certain.

Someone had been hurt, badly. They’d captured one of the soldiers in black, but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take her with them when they’d abandoned the bunker. It had been, unless they started to deprive the prisoner first, at least five days.

The bunker was in shambles. Drawers were overturned, weapons lockers were cleared. Electronics had been broken where they couldn’t be moved quickly. It was rapid, chaotic, and it didn’t feel like Eli. It felt out of control.

 

Rook had to photograph the scene. He had to preserve the scene before the place flooded, to have something to refer back to now that it felt like an investigation.

 

There were no new notifications to bother him while he took photos this time, no signal to bring them. But the messages he’d received before had been saved. He shouldn’t fucking listen. He was in an abandoned bunker with a corpse, it wasn’t the time, it wasn’t—

_Message received, Monday, five p.m._

“Rook, you have two minutes to turn your fucking GPS back on. Two. Minutes.”

Jacob’s voice echoed in the metal room, irritation made tinny by the small speakers. Timestamped just before Rook had left, before Joseph had gotten home ( _all my life and you_ ).

 _Message deleted_ , the automated female voice said. _Message received_ a few minutes later and, just a short noise, cut off. Jacob, angry and not quick enough to hang up.

_Message deleted. Message received, Monday, eleven p.m._

“Rook,” Joseph said and Rook hung up immediately, shocked somehow by the sound of his voice in a dark room. It was loud then with the sound of his heartbeat, filling the air and hitting the walls of his ribs, the cell, swelling out through his skin and Rook pressed the phone between his hands, pressed his forehead to it, he couldn’t,

he couldn’t.

He was in the dark and he’d left, he was an adult so he stood and walked to the other side of the room, out to the planning room in the feeble light of his fucking torch and he _couldn’t_ —

_Message received, Monday, eleven p.m._

“Rook,”

 _Rook_ when he’d already used his first name, when he’d already shouted it at him—

He hung up, jabbed at it, and something clanged from somewhere in the bunker.

Rook lifted his head.

There was a distant splash, and then nothing.

Rook turned the phone off, slid it into his pocket. Killed the torch and stood in the dark, listening. The dim light off the damaged monitors wasn’t enough to make anything out past the doorway, a dark so complete it felt like it was pressing in.

Rook watched the void of the doorway for a moment. He was too exposed, his skin was prickling, electric with sudden alertness. Silence in an empty space was untextured. Devoid of patterns of breath, air shifting as bodies moved.

The air was wrong. The quiet of someone trying hard to make it so. Quick steps, weight shifting lightly. Rook was too exposed and withdrew to the torture room, half-closed the door behind him silently. He settled behind the door in a crouch, slowly-slowly brought his pistol up in readiness.

It could be a Whitetail. It could be a Whitetail, a peggie, a scavenger, it could be one of the men in black, it could have been _Grace_. It wasn’t like he could just shoot them. Rook’s eyes had adapted to the dark already, and he waited for an age, adrenaline settling to a simmer.

One person. Soft rustling of clothes as they moved around, in the comprehensive darkness distinct to bunkers, windowless and oppressive. Rook readjusted his grip on the pistol when soft breaths came closer.

When his straining eyes made out a shadow, Rook slammed into the door with his shoulder. It hit something that gave and there was an explosion of noise, a gunshot fired reflexively so Rook went low, threw the door open and dived. He hit them in the waist, took them right off their feet and got them under the gun, forced it up. A series of flashes as it went off, so close to his ear that it _hurt_ , that it rang loud-piercing even when he bore them down to the floor and it clattered, dropped.

Male. Dressed in black, from what he could see, and lunging up quickly. Good at grappling – too fucking good, snake-fast and Rook blocked a hit going low for his gut, not an instinctive lunge for the face like an amateur would make. He picked him up bodily and slammed him back down, earned a cry and so he fucking did it again, ears still ringing.

It ended quickly.

Rook got an elbow to the ribs, a panicked flail when he pressed down and it would bruise, he could feel it from the heat blooming across his chest. But he got them down, a pop that he was pretty sure was a dislocated shoulder.

He kept struggling. But it wasn’t enough ( _weak_ ) and Rook had been fighting Jacob, who was a league all of his own. “Who are you?” Rook asked.

The man didn’t answer. He bucked up spitefully, so Rook took hold of his dislocated shoulder and pulled. His pained cry echoed through the bunker.

Rook leaned down. “I don’t like repeating myself,”

                           _I don’t like repeating myself_ and John, lovely lovely always _looking_ at him

“Fuck you,” the man gritted out and Rook was already angry, it had shot through him like a fucking bullet (bled like _loss_ ) so he shook him like a rag doll.

“You’re in a hole in the ground in the ass end of Montana,” Rook told him, leaned real close. “Built to stand a nuclear war. Enough food and water for seven years,” and Rook felt him tense. “No one’s coming to save you.” and he heard his breaths come in harshfast, Rook knew he had him.

 

 

The man didn’t know much. His name was Patrick and he’d been sent to recover the soldier locked away, her body if she was already dead. Their mission was top secret, every level hidden from the other. He’d been brought in recently, knew to expect someone armed in the bunker. He was a soldier, once. He’d gone into security contracting, a fancy way of saying mercenary work, he didn’t know who’d hired them and Rook shot him, in the end. Took his fancy gun and put a bullet through his temple, took his radio too.

It was late when he climbed out, and good old _Pat_ had mentioned he had a friend waiting outside for him that Rook was ready for, but Peaches looked up with a mouthful of elite mercenary, rain streaking the blood down her face and Rook cooed at her. His good girl, though Boomer muscled his way in for affection too. Even the poor light filtered through the clouds, through the cold air, was blinding after the bunker and Rook’s ears still rung, he felt like he’d climbed out after a hundred years. He retreated to the nearby cliff wall and set up a lean-to shelter against nearby trees, made it watertight with a tarp that was noisy under the rain.

He shed his wet jacket on the way inside and spread it out as much as he could to try and dry it some, though he knew it was a long shot. He couldn’t risk sleeping in the bunker whether he locked the door or not, not when Patrick had known exactly where to find it.

He set about examining his stolen equipment. The radio he’d taken was a good one. High quality, good range, waterproof, the best sound quality he’d heard from one and it had some fancy sort of features Rook knew nothing about. Rook set it aside with the volume up, let it filter in

The messages on it were coded. The people speaking were too smart, organised, kept things clipped and cryptic. But Rook was a fast fucking study, and he knew Hope County well.

He didn’t get anything on their motives, what they were looking for. But setting up camp, a lean-to under a tarp to keep the rain out, Rook heard some fuckwit with a Southern accent say _drop_ when he found a corpse dumping ground, red peggies left in it and well, that was interesting.

The Whitetail visitor centre was close, just down the mountain. Rook had torn through, murdered his way through peggies using it as a base while they hurled men into Devil’s Drop and left them to die, skinless. It would have been free for taking. A base from which to investigate the Whitetails and already claimed, not something people would look at too closely.

He took his phone out when shifting made it dig into his thigh, tossed it onto his drying jacket so he wouldn’t have to look at it. _Rook,_ and what the hell else could Joseph say to make it better, what words would he waste in a message he had to have known Rook was never going to hear? He had to know Rook wouldn’t listen to it ( _you don’t know how to be **loved**_ ) and the rain, ruining everything.

He wasn’t going to think about it. He wasn’t. He had to investigate the Centre, find Eli. Find out what he knew about the peggies while Jerome hunted down Sampson. He had shit to do and his soulmates were

no one, Rook thought. He didn’t have soulmates (plural), he didn’t have a soulmate (singular). He had a lead on his enemy, a radio to listen to them and a direction to follow. He had messages on his phone, pills to keep him safe.

Those were the things he had. That was enough.

 

 

 

He set off once night fell. There were two easy ways to approach the Whitetail visitor centre. The road and the woods and frankly, it was a shitty camp to make. The walls and existing peggie fortifications made it defensible, at first glance, and it must have seemed like a good spot from that perspective. Expecting people to attack in force, even small groups.

The cult hadn’t expected that by the end. They’d tried sealing every crack, wary of a single man with a gun and three sets of sharp teeth. To Rook, it was a terrible decision. It could be approached from any side, had a perimeter too broad to maintain with a small force.  Rook would have set up mines, he’d have riddled the area with traps, he’d have made an intruder bleed for every fucking inch.

Rook wasn’t a fan of bleeding. He’d done enough of it to be sure. He studied the area through his binoculars and it was difficult to see, the wind pushing the rain back into his face and the floodlights highlighting it wherever he looked. But the mercenaries were set up there and one hauled a body bag into the centre while he watched.

Fucking idiots, Rook thought irritably, because water was dripping down the back of his neck and he could at least trust the peggies to slow down at night. He clocked it at nine souls. Seven men, two women. All of them wide-a-goddamn-wake.

Rook’s new rifle didn’t have a silencer. He hadn’t remembered to pick one up before he left Fall’s End and realising he didn’t have one, not being able to pick people off from the hunting platform on the nearby tree, made him very nearly furious. His ribs really were bruised, fucking _Pat_ , and he climbed down from the hunting platform ready to kill some people.

 

Peaches led the way for him. Rook couldn’t rely on dynamite in this kind of weather and so after a gesture from him she tore a man, screaming, off his low ledge and dragged him into the trees with a loud snarl. As good a distraction as any and the mercs immediately approached the noise, left Rook the opening to run (keeping low) to the building, the hop in through a broken window. His boots crunched on glass and he stayed ducked, left a proximity mine on the rear door for when they came back.

It was too open. The place was just a few buildings cobbled together and Rook was too big to skulk around when eyes looking for him knew what they were doing, he couldn’t risk outdoor proximity mines with Boomer and Peaches running around.

A few minutes later, the mine went off and Rook leapt into action. Shot down a man who ran out on fire, screaming, ducked as bullets shattered the stone wall behind him and rolled for cover. He fished for a grenade, pulled the pin and waited ( _one, two_ ) before lobbing it fast, heard a yell before it detonated and he was already moving in the split second after the explosion, shot down the man who’d taken the counter as cover.

A familiar snarl and a scream, a high canine yelp made Rook turn fast to see a woman hurling Boomer off her, look over at Rook before bullets tore through her skull, sent blood and bone fragments flying.

Boomer scrambled to his feet, shook himself to dislodge some of the mud and Rook could breathe again, ducked low to keep going. Four down, five left and he cleared two in the carpark, one going for the radio in their truck and the other failing to cover her effectively, tripping in a puddle of all the fucking things.

There was a man with a mounted machine gun at the top of the hill, which would have been bad news if it had rained even one inch less that day because it had sunk slightly, enough to give Rook a range of movement at the bottom of the hill and he just went around, vanished into the trees and “they’ve got sniper cover!” the man screamed when a shot rang out, splintered the glass of the information centre, the last thing he said before Rook picked him off. Seven down, two left and there was a glint in the top of the information centre, Rook threw himself into the mud before a shot could take his head off. He stayed plastered there behind the bushes and hated every second of it, leaves above releasing water onto him in clumps of rainfall and the mud seeping in, sticking down his shirt, the front of his pants.

He was never going to be clean again. Motherfucking _mercenaries_ and he crawled to the side for the greater cover of trees. Another shot and more breaking glass – the sniper had moved nests, Rook made it to the wall of the information building without another bullet to dodge. He quickly glanced around the corner and saw no one, pulled himself in through an open window to skulk in through the employee change room.

Too many windows. There were too many windows and he glanced up, rifle ready when he went in but the walkway above just had an arm hanging off it. A sniper rifle had fallen, dangling by its strap from the railing support, caught there before it could hit ground level.

Rook raised his eyebrows. Friendly fire was a common killer of peggies, but it felt a little anticlimactic. He kept going, rounded a display ( _Bear with us: wildlife safety tips_ ) and made it around to the base of the stairs before he heard something.

“Freeze!”

Rook turned and lucky number nine stood there, blinking fast to see through the blood running down her face.

Rook lifted his hands.

“Drop the gun,” the woman ordered.

Rook tilted his head. “What?” he asked loudly.

“I said drop the _fucking_ gun!”

Rook squinted. “What?!” even louder, took a step. She lifted her gun, hoisted it meaningfully and Rook widened his eyes ( _who, me_ ) and spread the fingers of his free hand. “Whoa, whoa!”

He needed to get closer, to get within tackling range. Peaches wouldn’t be able to help him with the doors closed and he needed both hands for a rifle the size of his, he couldn’t kill the woman fast enough to stop her from shooting him.

“Drop the gun, you crazy cult fuck!” she spat and Rook was honestly so offended that he was speechless. Honestly _affronted_ because he was a crazy fuck but he didn’t – he didn’t _worship Joseph_ , that was just – he was public enemy number one to the cult, he’d _earned_ that and this woman had just –

she’d called him –

 _cult_ fuck, she’d called him a _cult_ fuck –

“You have until the count of three,” she warned him, blood smeared down her face and neck, darkening her shirt to make it cling wetly to her collarbone. She’d been clawed, Peaches from the look of it, and his girl was getting rusty if she’d let someone escape.

“Three. Two.”

Rook considered charging her and her radio went off, made her jerk and him look down for bullet holes automatically.

 “ _—on hostile_ —” too far, the radio clipped to her shirt damaged and crackling where she must have hit the ground (muddied, her too) and she lifted it to her mouth by shrugging her shoulder.

“Copy. Up in the information lobby, require assistance. Over.”

After a moment, she got back a simple _copy that_ and Rook grimaced. The woman adjusted her stance and a few seconds of stand-off later, the door beside them opened.

She jerked her head towards Rook, not taking her eyes off him. “About time. Hurry it up.”

Not even a beat before Jacob stepped over the threshold, a shock of red hair above black fatigues, so much bigger than Rook had made him in his mind. “Suit yourself,” he said, and shot her in the chest. She went down in a spray of blood, violent enough for it to fleck Rook’s face at six feet away.

Rook looked at her body, the dying spasm and the look of surprise frozen on her face. Looked up at Jacob, holding his red and black rifle and his eyes so fucking blue.

“… You look good in black,” Rook offered.

Jacob’s smile didn’t reach his eyes, thin-lipped and furious. “No shit,” he said.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course he looks good in black, Rook, you ignorant fuck. He's a blue-eyed redhead built like a tank, he should shoot you for not just taking it as a given. Also you deleted his messages, which. Rude.
> 
> Chapter title from Detail of the Fire by Richard Siken, one of my favourite poems and like my other Siken recommendation, extremely thematically appropriate because my poetry game is on point.


	24. a squeaky pain upon each breath

 

 

Rook wanted to run.

He was long past shooting Jacob. Not in the quiet, in cold blood. Jacob stood there with his red-black rifle with his red-black self and Rook wanted to run but he couldn’t because his hands were still up, he still needed both to use his rifle and Jacob would catch him before he made the door. So Rook held still, didn’t even shift his weight in case Jacob took it as an attack.

Jacob looked him over. There was a slant to his mouth that on someone else, would have been teasing. Mocking, even, familiar territory for Jacob. But Rook knew Jacob (just a little) and he knew better. Saw past it to how tight his jaw was, how little he blinked. Stalk-steady.

Not teasing. Not mocking.

Jacob was furious, and he approached with his rifle pointed at the ground, held with one hand but not slung to safety on his back.

The radio on the woman’s chest, on Rook’s hip, went off. A series of long static bursts that meant nothing except Jacob pulled an identical one from his belt. He pressed the button rattled off a sequence of numbers that made it stop, made that line in Rook draw taut.

“Are these yours?” he asked, adrenaline abating but not gone.

Jacob put the radio back and looked at Rook, impending violence that looked good in black. “There’s only one thing here that’s mine,” he said, voice rough and low, the way Rook so easily forgot it was. Mind learning new realities without the Seeds, every day.

Rook jerked his head at him. “Why are you dressed like that? How did you know that code?” Rook was aware of how ridiculous it was to demand answers from the man holding him at gunpoint. But realistically, Jacob was (always) in control and Rook had always had to manage with the hand he was dealt.

Jacob tilted his head. “This is my mountain, Rook,” he said, a step closer, too close. “This is what I do,” said with satisfaction, with menace, with too much meaning for Rook to grapple with.

“They’re taking red peggies,” Rook said cautiously. “I think they’re—”

“How did you find them here?” Jacob interrupted.

Rook stopped, narrowed his eyes. “…Found a radio,” he said evasively.

Jacob’s smirk, too edged. “They talk in code, deputy.”

“I’m not an idiot, _Jacob_ ,” Rook returned. “They slipped. I knew this place.”

Jacob raised his eyebrows. “I know. I remember.” He was circling, then. Jacob with the gun, Jacob steering the conversation. “Why are you here?”

“They’re obviously related to the red peggies,” Rook replied with wariness. “Of course I was looking into it.”

“They’re taking them,” Jacob agreed. He stopped by Rook’s shoulder, a sudden warmth radiating there. “What do you know, deputy?”

Rook swallowed. A gun at his back and no room for the flare of violence that shuddered through him. “Not much yet,” he said.

A huff, unamused. Unimpressed. “You’ve been gone for over a week,” Jacob observed, condescending. “Getting soft.”

Rook bristled before he could stop himself – Jacob had slid the jab in, the knife in, nerves waking up too late for him to do anything about it. “I was busy.”

“Too busy to pick up your phone,” Jacob agreed, and then Rook was tense for an entirely different reason. There was a rustling that almost made him flinch, then a hollow tap noise that made him risk a turn.

Jacob was holding his phone. His own phone, screen lit up.

Rook ran cold, sleet on the inside. Jacob hit a button and Rook lunged, hit Jacob around the chest and took them both down to the ground. Jacob was already twisting before they hit but he was blocking for attack and Rook wasn’t, he just couldn’t,

he couldn’t,

he couldn’t do it, he wasn’t _ready_ and he was grabbing at the phone while Jacob went for his eyes – his fucking _eyes_ , why did they always go for those – and he smashed Jacob’s fist once, twice against the ground to try and make him loosen his grip. His fingers just wouldn’t fucking open but,

“Jacob?”

speaker-tinny _Joseph_ and Rook slammed his bodyweight into the next one with a yell, managed to pry Jacob’s fingers open and hurl the phone into the nearby stone wall.

The splintering _crack!_ of the phone punctuated Jacob’s jab to Rook’s jaw, a blinding flash of pain before he got shoved back to the ground. A moment of victory before Jacob had him down with his hand on his throat, leaned back when Rook tried to hook his fingers into his face.

Jacob grabbed his wrist and pinned it down, leaned in close to Rook’s face.

“There you are,” he said, voice gravelly and a fucking death knell and Rook snarled at Jacob, Jacob bared his teeth back lit up like fire, like muzzle-flare and, “ _try_ it,” savagely and a moment of silence between them, both of them catching their breath before Jacob surged forward just as Rook pulled himself up, crushed their mouths together in a kiss that knocked Rook back into the floor. Pinned down instantly, held there by bodyweight and body-memory and Jacob’s mouth like a scorched earth policy, the push of his tongue and the way he held Rook in place so he could burn through him (nothing left).

Rook growled into it, bit down hard and he tasted copper but Jacob didn’t care, just pressed down until the air was gone and Rook had to gasp into his mouth, wet and blistering, a bite right back that stung before Jacob was kissing him again, a kiss like a punch to the mouth and the taste of anger. Over and over until Rook’s  free hand was on the back of his head to keep him there, his pinned one flexing and desperate to move.

In the end Jacob had to breathe – was just a man – and his absence was a rush of cold air, a knife through Rook before the nerves woke up and Rook

did something about it

and Rook shoved him, he threw his body behind it and it was enough to force Jacob back. Long enough for Rook to scramble back, coming up against a column and panting, trying to catch his breath (gasping) in hard-fast inhales.

Jacob moved. Pupils blown and leonine he shifted to come closer and there was a moment then, a moment in a field weeks ago when Rook had pushed him back, just like that, and Jacob hadn’t wanted to go, just like that except,

the same motion in the same way and somehow,

it didn’t feel the same at all. Rook tensed in response, readied himself to kick him in his stupid fucking face and Jacob saw it, he glared. Rook held a hand out to stop him and he must have been Moses with the goddamn tide, because Jacob paused and,

“I can’t forgive you!” came out, firm and loud and urgent. “Any of you, it’s not _happening_!”

It was betrayal to forgive them. To look at what they did to Joey, to Staci, what they’d been _willing_ to do to everyone else and just –

It was betrayal. Rook was so many things, but he wasn’t a traitor

yet.

Jacob narrowed his eyes. Still breathing hard, just a rim of river around wide pupils. “So don’t.”

Of course it would be that simple for Jacob, whose will made reality, especially for fucking Rook (redred _red_ ) but Rook knew himself, the splintering, spiderwebbing cracks of _yet_ working its way deeper every day in beds that didn’t fit, hands that weren’t near his.

Rook wet his lips, tried a smile that felt like grimace. “If you’re near me,” he said, “I’ll forgive you.” Simple as that and Jacob leaned forward, just a man but it felt like tectonic plates shifting, magma one layer down while Rook scrambled for his balance.

Rook couldn’t keep it up. He didn’t want to think it but he couldn’t _maintain_ it, Rook who stood steady no matter what, did what he had to do and he couldn’t do the one fucking thing he needed to. He wasn’t built to resist them and it scorched like the first bloom of an explosion gone just too close, the way Rook ran through them before they were over.

“Ask me,” Jacob rumbled.

Rook shook his head.

Jacob leaned in again, crouched next to Rook’s legs. “Rook. Ask me,” he repeated.

Rook swallowed. “Go,” he said, voice coming out tight. “Go away.”

Jacob remained, he didn’t fucking leave because Rook wasn’t fucking _done_ , a thing he shouldn’t have known. But Jacob knew Rook,

just a little.

“But come back,” Rook finished, putting his head in his hands because he felt his spine give away, his body was too heavy without the support column.

Go, but come back. The Collapse in Rook, so much quieter than sermons, than search flights overhead. So much quieter than Jacob’s steady breaths, the long, long pause he took and furious, furious, the taste of it in his mouth.

Jacob put a hand on his neck. Rook tensed because he knew how that went but Jacob put his hand on his neck and

it didn’t hurt at all, he tilted Rook’s head up and kissed him. Not grasping like he had been because he knew, he _knew_ that Rook wanted him to come back so Jacob kissed him carefully, brittle with restraint. They broke apart and Rook pushed Jacob out of his space, he needed air, he needed his _own_ air and,

“I’ll see you soon,” Jacob ground out, he threatened, because Jacob was patient but Jacob was furious, and he stood. “Check your fucking phone.”

 

 

Jacob liked to be asked. He liked to be able to do what was asked (harebells in the sun) and just like that,

he left.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook stayed sitting where Jacob had left him for a long time. His mouth felt hot like a bruise, like the purple Pat had left along his ribs. The mud on the front of his clothes was drying and stiffening and his skin was too, hardening and hollow because his insides had been left behind. He had to stop. He had to stop this, had had to put A Stop to this but he didn’t know how, wasn’t sure what he was talking about anymore.

Luckily there was more than one thing he had to do, and there wasn’t anyone left to interrogate. It took a thousand years, a few minutes, who fucking knew, but he got up, he got himself together.

Jacob never just left a room. He left a hole in it too. Made of silence, the space between words where they seemed to talk best. Widened until it yawned open, threatened to swallow everything inside.

 

 

Rook knew how to investigate, and it steadied him. The hill was slippery (Rook was slipping) but he knew what to _do_ so he started with the bodies, examined them for evidence. Even though somebody clearly already had – probably one of Jacob’s hunters, maybe more than one, someone with plenty of time to rifle through while Jacob was

busy.

The idea of them seeing wasn’t one Rook wanted to linger on so he didn’t, he went through pockets instead and he rifled through briefcases and there were just numbers on red peggies, a few empty body bags where their bodies had been reclaimed by the cult.

It was a token effort, anyway. There weren’t going to be any clues. They’d already set themselves up so none of them knew what the others were doing – it was organised, designed so that parts could be dismantled without giving any indication of what the whole looked like. Rook didn’t have the time or the resources to crack their code, to infiltrate like Jacob already had. He had no military background to assist him in speaking their language, in understanding their (Jacob’s) thought processes.

He wasn’t going to get answers that way. He had to play to his strengths, and Rook had two sets of those. Before Rook, who had the skills of a police officer, the patience of someone expecting nothing. After Rook, who could set the world on fire without flinching, who had razors down his insides and three sets of teeth.

Rook pulled out his map when he was done, scratching Boomer’s ears idly while he studied it. He knew that Jerome had mapped out their barricades close to the edges of the County, securing all the exits. Jacob had given him a stay of execution ( _see you soon_ ) and Rook couldn’t be sure that John, that Joseph, that even Faith would do the same.

Rook didn’t have the mercenaries’ motives.

 

He did have a route to the nearest county exit, and knew too much for them to let him leave.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook set up camp far from the centre, a good mile away in the dark. Closer to his destination the next day. He’d decided on Hawkeye Tunnel, in the end. The last time he’d seen it, the tunnel was decorated with the bodies of the unfaithful. Innocent people flayed and staked out to the mountainside and left to die of exposure, of hanging upside-down and begging to die without tongues. The tunnel had a turn-off halfway through, cut into the high cliff it bore through that provided a window into it, air circulation for the little traffic it saw. Mostly the big-wheel trucks that delivered supplies to the hospital, ambulances out to the airfield for the really severe, but it had the occasional tourist going directly through to the Whitetails.

Rook’s best shot would be to scale the cliff and take them from the side. It would be fortified either inside the tunnel or at either end – they’d need to stop anyone before they got through to the other side, where it opened up wide through the mountain and left too much room to manoeuvre an escape. He couldn’t risk an attack at night again, not if he was going up the cliff, and it left him without Boomer or Peaches. In truth he felt better for it – they were his, they were his constants, phantoms limbs who were love-hungry as he was – because there’d be mines leading up to the tunnel if they had any sense. Unlike peggies, it seemed like they did.

Rook thought over his plan of attack while he set up his camp. The ground was firm enough, moving a little further up the slope, to support pegs and he put up his tent in a particularly thick copse of trees. It had settled to a drizzle, an irregular noise of water falling on the canvas as he curled himself up, the air thick with the smell of wet dog from Boomer’s wet body wriggled in beside him. The weather and the trees made the darkness whole, somehow, insulated him from attack in what he knew was an illusion but felt better for anyway.

Peaches had decided not to join them. She didn’t love the smell, didn’t like close quarters in the damp. He’d probably find her up a tree in the morning, soaked but smell-free.

Rook didn’t mind it so he lay there, hugged Boomer’s contented form close to his chest and looked at his phone. Screen still dark, powered off.

 _Check your phone_ and Jacob, leaving because he’d asked him to.

 _Check your phone_ and red peggies vanishing, people with black vans and good training and Rook, not a traitor yet.

Rook dug in a little to feel his good boy breathing, the strong smell of wet fur to ground him while Boomer snuffled into his other hand.

 

_Message received Monday, eleven p.m._

“Rook,” Joseph’s voice, Rook’s flinch in the dark. Too close, a voice by his face in the dark made whole. “I know that you’re angry, but we can explain this. I can explain.” A pause. “Come back to us. Please. There is more happening here than you know.”

 

_Message received Tuesday, seven-thirty p.m._

“John’s men saw a man of your description moving towards Fall’s End,” like a rush of ice water, glacier-melt down the past because Rook had been _careful_. “John isn’t sure it was you, he insists you will be close by the woods again but you’re… distinctive, Rook. I know it’s you. Have you left us for them again?”

 

_Message received Wednesday, three-oh-five p.m._

“Jacob has returned,” Joseph said, six days in the past, one day after Rook had left. “He wanted to go and find you, but I’ve convinced him he shouldn’t. He has to have faith,” the way that word was to Joseph as _yes_ was to John, as _weak_ was to Jacob. “but he is angry. You’re angry, John is–”

An exhalation. A sigh.

“I know you will come back,” Joseph said quietly. “I know. This is a test and you will _come back_ , but.” A rustle, fabric moving. “You have a right to be angry. Waiting for you is missing you, Rook. Please come home soon.”

 

_Message received Friday, ten p.m._

Jacob’s voice was a shock – so long avoiding Joseph that he’d forgotten Jacob had called too ( _don’t you fucking dare_ ) when he’d found the van.

“Deputy,” Jacob said. “This game won’t last forever. I told you before that I would come for you. Count on it.”

 

 

A message had rolled in during Rook’s attack on the Visitor Centre. One more missed called from Joseph and a first missed call from John. A single text message of

 **John  
** _are you safe_

before the notification of a voicemail for Joseph came in.

 

 

_Message received Saturday, one a.m._

Joseph sounded tired. He’d called Rook past midnight, accent thick the way it got when he was tired, when he was angry. But his voice was heavy, like rounded vowels was weighing it down. “I heard your voice,” Joseph said, one-in-the-morning Joseph said. “I didn’t ask you to forgive me, before.” Exhausted, his line to Jacob splintered on the floor. “I didn’t, and I should have. It’s funny,” said so quietly, “how things seem so different when we look back. How the tests we fail seem so simple.”

Joseph’s long breath in and Rook’s was burning him, caught in his lungs where he couldn’t let it escape.

“Was that my test, Rook?” Joseph asked. “Not waiting, but keeping you. Have I already failed?”

A pause.

“Your name means _beloved_ ,” Joseph said softly. “Did you know that?”

 

 

A beep, and then,

 _you have no new messages_.

 

 

Rook’s hand hurt. The edges of the phone had cut into it where he had gripped too tightly, a rectangle of red marks that would greet him in the morning.

He couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

But body-memory made it safe to open a message, the only one John had sent him in a week of the freezing fucking cold, of John’s head in his hands and Jacob’s fingers around his throat, Joseph speaking to Rook lonely in the dark.

 **Rook  
** _i'm fine_

The three dots of a typed response coming up immediately, at three in the morning from John, who always answered. Rook watching, eyes watering in the dark as they came up once, twice, then vanished again. John typing and deleting, typing and deleting. A suspense of a kind Rook couldn’t handle until he had to turn it off, Rook who listened but who couldn’t wait any more.

It flashed up before he was done.

 **John  
** _i miss you_

Somehow worse than nothing, so Rook turned it off anyway.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Rook. Even for a short chapter, you're so fucked. Though I don't envy the men in that tunnel.
> 
> Chapter title from Cocoa Hooves by Glass Animals. That's right, we're getting sexier.


	25. in the same boat, making waves

 

 

The light of day made Rook glad he’d waited for it.

He scaled a tree and examined what was visible of the tunnel. The rain had eased – a much-needed respite – but the clouds hung low to be called mist, clung to the top of trees. It made it hard to see, and Rook looked for a while before he understood what was in front of him. The mercenaries had stuck explosives in the cliff wall leading up to the look-out. It wasn’t impassable but it was a fucking hassle since it was already slippery from the rain, mist-slick still. The only bright side was that the entrances were swarming with mercenaries – at least two dozen before he stopped counting, before they all started looking the same – but they clearly felt protected atop that cliff face, because there were only six in that space.

Rook settled back on the branch.

Six men wouldn’t be an issue. The _issue_ was that as organised as they were, Rook would have the other twenty-four-plus swarming all over him before he could get through the first six. No need for one to even raise the alarm when all someone had to do was walk past the massive fucking archway.

He could always climb up and throw a grenade over the ledge, he mused. Not subtle either, but six more dead in that scenario than the previous.

Rook swung down from the branch, landed hard in dead leaves and much and the impact jarring a thought loose, quick-sharp and funny.

He smiled to himself, like there was room enough on him for bashful because fuck, he was an idiot. He didn’t need to kill them all. He wasn’t actually trying to leave, he just needed information. For that, he just needed one of them.

It just had to be the right one.

 

 

Finding Mister Right had never been so fucking easy. Rook nailed the map holder with his grappling hook and dragged him over the cliff ledge, ignoring panicked yells by dropping down below tree level as he fell, ropes snapping taut when he took up the slack.

Rook got him to a more secluded spot before slapping him awake. The impact had broken his leg, bone jarred right out through his calf and he screamed, he screamed and screamed (blood spurts around bone) until Rook intervened with a syringe. He kicked out and the bone shifted in the wound, made him go white (red pouring out).

Rook let the drugs take effect while he considered what to do.

Rook wasn’t set up for torture. Didn’t have the equipment on hand (on the inside) to do the job right. _Behavioural adjustment_ like Jacob might have said before he put his suite of tools to work to change someone from the inside out, but that wasn’t the level Rook operated at. He’d taken this prisoner by picking out the one with the map, the one that others bent their heads to hear, and he’d dragged his screaming ass over a cliff and that was probably a lot for one mercenary to deal with in a day.

Not torture. Not Rook. But the man was disoriented, frightened.

Easy.

The soldier spat at him, slurred-hurled curses when Rook offered him some water. Rude for a fucking yes-no question but he’d had a long day and it gave Rook the chance to tilt his head while the echoes died ( _fuck_ whittled down by trees), crouched in front of him.

Nothing followed; just the man’s heaving breaths, Rook’s stillness to fill the space.

Silence, always made a little of alone (not-looked-for) and the two of them,

sitting in it.

Rook knew. It was part of him already, deep-down-dark but that fucking fool, well.

Easy.

 

 

The mercenaries had found Eli and his militia, but the Whitetails had cleared the site before the enemy could move in in force. A message had started up on repeat over the radio ever since, a simple phrase repeated over and over. The soldier didn’t remember what it was. He’d been put in charge of surveying the area while they waited for an away team to find clues to where Eli was. To make sure that no one escaped.

He didn’t know what red peggies were. But vans had left with bodies in the back. He didn’t know why, either. But then his men had started vanishing into the woods, coming back strange and shell-shocked and unable to remember where they’d been. They’d seen wolves, too large and like ghosts in the trees, and the rain had sunk them into their base, the woods had started to loom.

Like Hope County was eating them. Swallowing them up, crumbling at the edges to take them down.

 

 

Rook decided that was enough when the man started listing to one side, sluggishly leaking to death and with nothing new to tell him. He stood, took the safety off his pistol and the man slurred,

“Go ahead,” like he could stop him, “better dead than here,” and Rook couldn’t agree more. The shot scared birds out of the surrounding trees.

 

The frequency was AM – who the fuck used AM – so Rook had to drag a log out onto the road and wait for a peggie to screech to a half in front of it. Peaches took care of the driver wihle Rook leaned over and turned the dial, setting the radio to scan.

_and now listeners will be delighted to hear_

_the weather today will be a top of_

_Bach’s prelude, suite number_

_-COB SEED_

Rook turned it up to hear, scrambled for a pen in the glovebox before the message repeated and he realised he wouldn’t need it. A jovial voice, canned words everyone knew and a hard left turn at the end.

 _(Only you can prevent **JACOB SEED**_ )

The right number of syllables to replace the slogan seamlessly (forests fires turned Jacob Seed) but Eli’s loud-hard voice made it too pointed, just out of rhythm. An itch that wouldn’t stay still, just wrong enough. And then the message repeated, over and over (only you) and Rook had to laugh. Loud and sudden and delighted because sure, it was cheesy. Sure it was a taunt to Jacob, to his song and his posters and his mission but it was also exactly the sort of shit Eli would find funny. Still snickering, Rook turned the car around (cross swinging from the rearview) and headed down the pass towards the Ranger Station.

 

 

(Only you can prevent forest fires, _only you, only you_ )

 

 

Rook didn’t need to mow through the peggies in the station, and it would have drawn too much attention. Eli would need enough clearance from it to get his militia in and out anyway, but Rook still stared at the peggies moving around in it for a while. He’d never gotten to Joseph’s fucking statue. Life was full of those little disappointments.

Rook parked on the high hill overlooking the site and let Boomer out of the front seat, went around back to open the door for Peaches because she was a lady. He pulled the map out and spread it over the bonnet, uncapped his pen with his teeth while he looked it over.

He could assume that Eli had moved to another bunker. Jacob and his wolves (noses to the ground, blood in the air) would have found him otherwise. It was safe to say that other militia members had bunkers that could be used as well. They’d had that prepper colour to them, the brown-green of camouflage with white-eyed highlights. But wherever they ended up would need to be big enough for all of them and well-stocked enough to keep them going, which was harder. His main concern had been the mercenaries getting to Eli before him but Mister Thursday had shown them, tripped them on the first step and bought them some time.

Rook tapped his pen on the map. To hell with it. He drew a wide circle around the station on the map, leaving about a two mile radius from it around, then a couple of marks over the higher spots he thought Eli might have liked better.

He slashed the search zone into grids and capped the pen, rolling up the map.

He got to work.

 

-

 

The peggies were out foraging and it slowed him down. The drizzle started up again half-heartedly, not the only one to want to be elsewhere and the sound camouflaged his footsteps but made the slope slippery, slowed him down. He was tired and numb and he checked under every log, every stone and inside every fucking crevice but in hours the only interesting thing he found was a wolverine snarling at a peggie, who was clinging to a rock face to try and stay out of its reach. He was wailing.

It was funny. But it wasn’t helpful.

It blurred into the same image, landscape stretching on like it was stretching out of Rook, numbness making sameness and leaving him with nowhere to go. He came across another peggie before it got dark and ended up having to drag Boomer away from a machine gun before the day ended in the worst way, took the bastard down with a tackle and a hit that made the guy’s head snap back once, twice, again. Rook checked Boomer over with his hands, with his eyes while the man groaned and whimpered, felt his good boy for so much as a scratch and said _sorry, sorry_ , because Eli wasn’t there.

He wasn’t.

But it was the ranger thing, it was that slogan they’d had for longer than Rook had been alive, they _had_ to be there. It was _only you can prevent forest fires_ and the wide-eyed mascot, Smokey the –

bear.

Rook stopped. Boomer whined into his ear, wanting the attention to resume.

Smokey the fucking _bear_.

Rook groaned, noise pulled right from the hollow of his gut and he stood, kicked the peggie just so someone else would care. “That’s on the other side of the fucking lake!” he snapped. The peggie apologised but he didn’t _sound_ like he was sorry, which made Rook feel a bit better about shooting him.

Rook seethed all the way back to the truck, let Peaches and Boomer back in and slammed his door behind him. The wrong way. He turned the key in the ignition hard enough that it sputter and he’d gone the _wrong way._ That was an embarrassment, a missed-step lurch of a mistake exposed. ugly. He’d gone the wrong way but Rook didn’t _go_ the wrong way. He always got exactly where he needed to go, inner compass True North ( _come home_ ) so it was a good thing he had a goddamn map, which would have to do.

A relief, too, when he could trust the road signs either – half of them told him he was going to hell.

 

 

It didn’t take long once he got to the turn-off for the FANG centre, the enormous bear billboard half-destroyed. They found him.

 

 

Rook knelt with his hands above his head when the yell rang out ( _for the Whitetails!_ ) and they surrounded him quickly, two young men who looked terrified to come near him. A hushed argument while Rook waited, shooting Peaches a dark look through the trees when her gold eyes loomed in the dark.

The argument ended. One put his gun away and fished something out of her pocket. They shoved a bag over his head. Black, stale-stink and coarse, they shoved a fucking _bag_ over his head and when they tied him to a chair and pulled it off (blinking-blind) Tammy gave him a grim smile.

“Welcome back,” she said, and a pain-flash crash into the back of Rook’s head turned the lights off.

 

-

 

A splash of cold water woke Rook. Over his face and inhaled when he gasped, metallic in his mouth and unwelcome burn in his lungs. He hacked and coughed, tried to rub his eyes but his arms caught – tied behind him at the wrists and elbows, back already aching. He blinked water away instead, grimacing at the icy water and chest still shuddering (water coming in0.

“Good morning,” he rasped.

“Deputy.” Tammy sat the bucket down; metal, souring the water. Rook looked down but his feet weren’t submerged, he couldn’t see a car battery. He could see the lines of his tattoo where they’d opened his shirt, where the dark veins of bliss were still fading.

“So. How are things?” he asked. A flash of pain and his head snapped to the side, he tasted blood – she’d backhanded him.

Rook stretched his neck, pulled faces (pulled the sting loose) to make the pain settle. Jaw working, it took a long moment for him to get out a terse, “ow.”

“Why did you come here?” Tammy demanded. No sign of her wolverine smile. She was tired, hair lank and greasy, dark, dried spots of blood on her clothing.

Rook looked her in the eye. “I came,” he said slow, measured, “because Jerome sent me to see where Grace was—”

_crack!_

Rook let his face stay turned away for a moment, took a deep breath through the snap-flash pain. Another breath, and _another,_ “Okay,” he said, looking at her again. “For Grace and to find out about the red peggies, hit me again and I’ll fucking cut you in _half_!” snarled, ripped out in a shout because how dare she _how dare she—_

It took him a second for the pain to register. His blood gone thick in him and slow to respond, the world slowed by rage and the pounding in his ears and the hilt of a slim knife sticking out of his shoulder when he looked down.

He had to give it to her. She hadn’t hit him.

When he looked back at Tammy with the blood-warm pouring down his arm, liquid pooling in his elbow, she was pale. Lips pressed together hard to hide it but her face was ashy, points of colour high in her cheekbones (bone stained in the forest) and expression defiant.

“Go ahead and try,” she dared him. “See how far you get.”

Rook licked his lips once, twice. Tried to breathe out through the rage-flare wrath and let it poison the room instead, seeping out of him. “What the fuck do you want?” he ground out, knife-wound-deep and bleeding.

“Why. Are. You. Here?” she repeated, teacher turned torturer and words slowed for stupid ears, patronising him.

“Jerome,” Rook replied, Giant Bastard face and just as slowly, “sent Grace to check on Eli. She disappeared. I heard Staci was sick and that you had some answers about the red peggies. I came to see for myself.”

A gleam in her eyes, hint of wolverine in her face. “You came for information,” she summarised.

“I came to see what the fuck is going on.”

Tammy made a face, faux-belief before she reached into her pocket. Rook didn’t tense – a weakness in him would be a victory for her, a win she hadn’t earned.

She pulled out a phone and it was familiar, it was,

“I know you’re working for them,” Tammy told him, eyes glittering with something he should have called malice but knew wasn’t, was something much worse because he saw an Eden’s gate symbol on the lock screen and

**Missed called: Joseph**

**Voicemail: New Message (1)**

**Jacob  
** _get out of the whitetails_

 **Jacob**  
_i’m not fucking around Rook  
get out now_

**Missed call: Jacob (2)**

something of his in Tammy’s fucking hand, Rook’s shoulders were burning before he knew he’d shoved himself forward against the rope, “that’s _mine_.”

“And now it’s mine,” she shot back. There were two bars of signal in the corner – the new bunker had the fucking doors open, wasn’t sealed right. “What’s the code?”

Rook closed his mouth. His shoulders were on fire.

Tammy pushed it closer towards his face. “What the fuck is the passcode?!” she demanded but

( _i miss you_ you think you’re funny _are you safe_ )

Rook didn’t say a fucking thing.

Tammy reached to the side, for the table empty of anything but a knife and a small container but before she could touch it, the phone rang. She jumped and they both stared at it, unbelieving. The shrill tone bounced off the metal walls and came back at Rook at angles, layers of noise.

**Incoming call: Joseph Seed**

Tammy glanced at him. Rook looked back at her helplessly, a crack in the wall (mountain coming down) and

“ _don’t_ ,”

but she picked up anyway. The ring cut off.

“Rook?” Joseph asked after a pause like he hadn’t expected Rook to pick up because _he hadn’t picked up_ and Rook’s breathing was coming faster, almost a whine because Joseph with him, in the bunker,

(in his head)

in Tammy’s grip.

“Guess again,” Tammy said. Voice steeled but wavering and how could she be fucking _stupid_ enough to think Joseph would hear it. Joseph, who didn’t miss a goddamn thing and Rook, trying to catch his breath while he sat in place.

Another beat. “Hello.” Joseph and a tilt of his head Rook could _hear_ , the way his pupils shrank when he got so still, narrowed in on something sharp-sure. “Who is this?”

Tammy was looking between Rook and the phone, unsure what she had to keep her eyes on. She swallowed. Rook pleaded with his eyes, voice trapped in his throat and in his thickening blood, muscles locking. She squared her shoulders. “We have your little boyfriend.”

Joseph’s low-slow hum. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” she snapped, “we do. And if you ever want to see him again, you’ll tell me what you bastards did to Eli!”

 Eli. _Eli_ and Rook could have howled with frustration because that meant Eli was _gone_ , and Joseph replied, “I don’t believe you.”

Tammy thrust the phone towards Rook. “Speak,” she ordered.

Rook sealed his lips together mulishly. This close he could hear Joseph’s soft breaths on the other end of the line. But resistance wasn’t something he could afford and Tammy jabbed her palm into the hilt of the knife, wrapped her fingers around to twist and he snarled, just enough.

 _“Rook_ ,” Joseph murmured and Tammy yanked the phone back towards her.

“There, he’s here. He’s here and alive, but one piece might be pushing it.” She twisted it again and Rook didn’t so much as hiss, he just glared.

Joseph didn’t reply. Tammy repeated herself. “Tell me where Eli is.” Her voice cracked and Rook would have felt bad for her, a month ago. Two months, three, but he’d cracked first (layers of sound) and,

“Miss _Barnes_ ,” Joseph said, an air of enlightenment that hit true half a county away. A remote detonation. “The teacher.” Tammy went the tense of a body days old, stress strained her to breaking in the white lines of her bones and knuckles. Joseph spoke again. “You don’t want to do this.”

Tammy’s laugh was a bark, the noise of a wolverine and a woman on the edge. “You don’t know _shit_ about what I want, _Father_.”

“I do,” Joseph disagreed and his tone made Rook shudder, crawled up his spine ( _who is this_ and his mother’s number), “you want this to be over. You want your family home and whole, you want peace. That’s all we want, Miss Barnes. Return the deputy.”

Tammy wasn’t Dutch. Rook couldn’t see Joseph rearrange the world in her because she wanted peace, sure. But violence had crept into her with the cables of a car battery, the sort of thing white-green antibiotics couldn’t fix.

“You’re wrong,” she said, voice wobbling. “You can’t give me what I want. But I’m not the only one, am I? Because your precious fucking deputy is here, not with you.”

It felt ridiculous for a second, it stung like a lie but that was true because Rook had left. He’d wanted trust and Joseph hadn’t given it to him, he’d wanted something he hadn’t gotten but it felt like a _lie_ because Joseph was with him. He was missed calls on the phone and beds too short for Rook’s legs and gentleness because no one wanted to _be_ gentle to Rook in Hope County - Joseph with him always, a wound infected. A slice gone septic Joseph’s words became a knife, turned Tammy to a pillar of salt with, “no one can give you that, Miss Barnes. You want your _brother_ back,” and Tammy sucked in a breath that had to hurt, she made a wounded noise and gripped the phone and,

“How _dare_ you,” she hissed. “How _dare_ you talk about him, you son of a bitch, you megalomaniacal cocksucking _bastard_ ,” and she yanked the knife out of Rook’s shoulder, stabbed it into his gut (pain sliced to the spine) and he made a noise, stifled around a slim blade that didn’t feel short any more ( _Rook?)_ and words tumbling out of her, short-hard and jerky. “You think you can take us that easy, do you, I’ll fucking _show_ you easy,” and she tossed the phone onto the table in disgust and picked up the small container from it, peeled the lid off and pinched white powder between her fingers.

“Find this,” she muttered, and blew it into Rook’s face.

The room swam. _I’ll **find** you_ , Rook heard and the wall spilled out in front of him to cut the room in half, redness leak-spilling across it and that moment of weightlessness, the blurred figure on the other side turning and something cracking in it, in Rook, a shadow on the wall he could reach out and touch and a fracture beneath his fingers ( _go but come **back**_ ) as a wide chasm split like a scream between them, ripped through as pain (as a shriek) and the bliss hadn’t been that bad, Rook had told himself,

but it always was.

 

 

-

 

 

“Rook!”

John’s voice and Rook turned towards it but his limbs wouldn’t obey him. He heard John and John was repeating his name but his ears were numb, his body wasn’t listening to him while Rook tried to move. “-n,” he managed, and then something hit him hard across the face.

“Rook!”

Rook opened his eyes and a face blurred into view in front of him. A moment of John, blue and black and that smile like a knife before it became someone very different.

The whites of Staci’s eyes were red but they focused on Rook fine, the raised veins around his neck and wrists burned to look at. “Rook!” He slapped his face again, hard enough for Rook’s eyes to water. “You fucking _idiot_.”

“Staci?” Rook asked, he slurred, he blurred around the edges. “How’re you…”

“Shut the fuck up,” Staci hissed. “You’re being too loud.” He moved out of Rook’s sight and then the ropes around Rook’s arms tugged, feeling raced up from his wrists in needle-pricking agony of circulation returning. Rook stifled a groan ( _shut the fuck up_ ) and Staci was – Staci and Joey, the first ones infected and Staci was _lucid_ , he was _coherent_ enough to mutter, “she thinks you’ve got Eli, she’s fucking lost it. We’ve got to get you out of here before the Seeds come down on all of us.”

“Staci,” Rook repeated, but the words tumbled out of him before he could form another sentence, a question made it out in just fragments. “How… red,” and it didn’t make sense but Staci seemed to understand anyway.

“Haven’t you heard? I’m _strong_ ,” Staci replied bitterly, working on the ropes around Rook’s wrists. He cursed. “It’s too thick. I’ll be back, but stay the fuck awake.” He stood and hesitated, turned to say,

“they’ll give you water. Don’t drink it,”

and then he was gone.

Rook let his head fall back and closed his eyes. _I’ll **find** you _ and he wondered who Joseph had been talking to – Tammy, her hand full of bliss and agony or Rook, who’d left.

Coin-toss odds but fuck, he’d missed Staci.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all missed Staci.
> 
> Chapter title from God Manchester Chinese Bridge by The Howl & and the Hum. Best band name, guys.


	26. see me bare my teeth for you

 

 

His head hurt.

Everything did, but that felt important. His head Hurt. His shoulders did too; his arms, the line of stripped-wire that was his spine but the throbbing at the base of his skull was so much worse.

“Don’t leave me.”

Rook’s head jerked up (lash-snap- _pain_ ) but the room was empty. Metal and concrete, the rust-pooled staining by the corner. Coldness, seeping in through the walls.

“Please.”

His own voice echoing out of nowhere, out of the hurt at the base of his skull. The things he hadn’t said out loud, a whisper so low it made his bones hum while sweet air drifted through the stink of old sweat and blood, cracking on

“ _please_ ,”

when he hadn’t opened his mouth. Rook sat there and ( _don’t leave me_ ) listened, tried to hang his head while he damned himself because

 _fuck_ the bliss

with his head throbbing in three-four time and he flinched when someone touched him, when he felt familiar hands supporting his face.

“Rook,” Joseph sighed, but there was no one there when Rook opened his eyes. An empty room stroked his forehead with Joseph’s fingers, cool against the hot and sweat of too much bliss then not nearly enough – Rook closed his eyes against a dry throat, the throbbing in his bones. “What’s wrong?”

“This isn’t real,” Rook said firmly, and he didn’t lean into the hands, into relief. He had to focus. He had to stay in control and wait, wait until it was time to stop and move again because _someone_ needed to and the burden of being strong enough to take it meant always having to. Having to stand and stretch up and bend for the hit, feel the sting before the scream. It had always been Rook, glass against his face and blood in his teeth.

Joseph made a sound – the one he did so well, that soft _ah_ of understanding, of shared grief and a hand on the shoulder. “But I am,” Joseph said, and it had always been him too. “Or am I nothing, too?”

The door creaked.

Rook opened his eyes. They stuck together, bleary and blistered from the inside.

“Ready?” Tammy asked. She was pale. The container in her hand held with fingers bloodless by pressure. She’d been a teacher, once.

“Yeah,” Rook replied. He lifted his head, neck aching. “Get on with it,”

and she did.

 

 

Rook was a fucking mess by the time someone new came in, by the time Tammy left. The knife in his gut was a low throb in time with his shoulder, where the bliss left room in pain pathways even while it still slid through him, a razor pressed to part nerves and vein walls. There was blood dried down his arm, his front, tacky in his teeth and his grin grotesque at the man who came in with water.

He didn’t drink it. He’d trust a half-crazy Staci over mostly-sane anyone else. Sane people were just as dangerous – sane just a word for contextually appropriate, for suited, not a good word in Hope County.

The man didn’t know what to do with himself when Rook said no. He put the bottle on the table before he realised Rook wouldn’t be able to grab it if he wanted to, picked it up and fiddled with the cap before he left it uselessly by the chair and walking out with the tight-awkward gait of someone who felt scrutiny.

Should’ve bitten him, Rook thought, and tried to fall asleep.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook wasn’t sure how long it took Staci to come back, but his hands were free before he registered someone else was in the room. He brought his arms around automatically and his hands clawed, he almost whited out with the seizing-grinding-cramping _crunch_ of muscles locking. Staci had to shove a hand over his mouth to stop a scream. Rook dry-heaved, dehydrated and tearing and Jesus _fuck_ he wanted to go home.

“Can you stand?” Staci whispered. Too small to carry him, Strong or not, so Rook nodded. Levered himself up and tried to grind through the pins and needles, aftershocks of pain running down his arms and back while Staci went ahead. He pulled the knife out slowly, trying to put pressure around the wound and fresh blood oozed from amongst the dry, spilled over his waistband when he straightened.

These pants wouldn’t be salvageable. He’d have to burn them. Would have to burn the room, impossibly, scorch the steel black until he’d exorcised it from himself, the high-clear stench of bliss from his skin.

Staci reappeared in the doorway to beckon him forward. “Come on!”

The hallway was half-metal, half-concrete. Cramped. Pipes ran overhead, filmy with condensation and a man was unconscious by the beaten-up locker that Staci was pulling Rook’s things out of. A broken lock was discarded on the floor next to it. Rook pulled gear back on stiffly and Staci took a semi-automatic as well as a handgun, ignored Rook’s questioning look because Staci had never liked guns – contextual madness, so Rook didn’t say a fucking word. Just bent like he was a hundred years old to put a knife in his boot, putting his jacket on slow because Staci could rush him all he wanted but Rook’s skin wasn’t the right shape, there wasn’t enough of it to cover him anymore (split at the seams) and in the end,

leaving was easy. Bunkers were designed for keeping things out.

 

 

The air was fresh enough to hurt. Rook’s eyes burned when the doors opened, his feet stumbled on uneven ground and the brush of leaves against him made his skin twitch, that warble-weak kind of feeling when nerves couldn’t tell when something hurt. They didn’t get too far before Staci pulled Rook into a half-burned abandoned building ( _SINNER_ ) for shelter and unsealed a first-aid kit. Shiny-new, crinkling as he opened it.

“You were always a shitty nurse,” Rook mused. He sat down heavily against the ruined wall, toeing a shatter-blackened photo frame to the side and breathing, pushing past the slit-slashed lining of his lungs where the bliss had sat.

Staci didn’t smile. Didn’t arc up, Staci-Lacey picking fights in hardware stores. “I learned.” He had. He stitched Rook up quickly if not neatly, doused him with enough antiseptic to give a helicopter mom a hard-on.

Rook talked throughout. It made it easier, made the twitch-sting-pull ebb and the shaking of his hands feel less red, less warm. He asked Staci about his time in the bunker, about Eli, about his sickness and didn’t get much ( _do I look like a doctor to you_ ) and Staci drilled him about the Resistance in turn, about Hudson.

It wasn’t raining, for a fucking change. Damp but not waterlogged, the remnants of it freezing, hardening the ground. It was past sunrise but the air was still frigid. Smothered by the rain before, it hadn’t bitten so hard. “What now?” Rook asked, pulling his shirt back on with protesting arms.

Staci looked at him askance. “Aren’t you the man with the plan around here?” The pale light made him seem sickly, worse than before. But it was upsetting to see him without being sickening, Rook couldn’t taste the embers in him that the red peggies writhed over.

The silence had gone too long. Staci’s expression morphed to outrage, “you’ve got to be fucking _kidding_ me, Rook!” and a hit that would have gotten Rook right in the stitches if he hadn’t been waiting for it.

“Hey, hey!” Rook defended. “I’m playing catch-up, here!”

“So hurry up!” Staci snapped. “I’m out here with you in the ass-end on the Whitetails in a … a fucking flannel shirt, half the county is after us and I had to help you escape torture by a primary school teacher! Get it together!”

“Okay!” Rook waved at him, a gesture for silence he already had. “Okay, Jesus.” He folded his hands in front of his mouth – they were pale already, bloodless with cold, mind racing to try and keep up. “So brief me, give me a timeline. When did Eli go missing?”

Staci looked like he wanted to hit him again. “Weeks ago, just after they changed base. Eli and the kid, Wheaties, they both vanished.”

Rook had just a vague memory of Wheaty (of wheaties) – dark braids, soured with worry. Fiddling hands like those on a bottle cap. “No fights, nothing suspicious?”

Staci folded his arms. Settled his stance just so, head tilted down. “Everything’s suspicious. Palmer’s paranoid, but he wasn’t worse than usual. From what I remember, at least.”

Rook pressed. “You can’t remember?”

Staci always had a hard look to him. It wasn’t his fault – Rook had met his mother. Half a smile on her face meant she still looked at you mean. “No,” he said shortly. “It was worse, then. It’s all… blurred together. They figured out how to slow it down early, but then,” and a bitter twist to his mouth, “Seed had already done a fair bit of the work.”

Rook knew the sort of work Jacob did. But more than that, he knew when to keep his mouth shut. Silence was frightening to some people – it held things inside it, made the room lopsided by leaving them alone with themselves. Rook knew himself well enough to bear it. Left enough of it between them that Staci continued, could find enough Staci in the silence to keep going. “He was… _trialling_ bliss,” Staci said. Remembering looked hard, like the memories were woven tight and needed unpicking. “He tested it. Faith’s people never got sick, so he was exposing people on purpose. Trying it on the ones who were bad already.” He gestured to himself, an ironic flourish. “Ta-da.”

Rook’s breaths were slow-steady, trancelike. “It helped you.”

Staci’s laugh was short, mean. “Oh, it fucked me up. But yeah. It _helped_.”

Rook swallowed. Nodded, but, “the water. What’s going on with the water?” and Staci paused mid-breath, riled.

“You don’t know?” he asked. Something pressing down on his voice, on that rage sit-splintering under his skin and coming out in shards, making it quieter with the grinding crunch of glass under heel.

Rook shook his head, mute.

“The sickness,” Staci said. “That’s where it comes from.”

Rook nodded. The dumb, bobblehead motion of someone just taking it in, set into motion by impact. “From the dam?” he asked evenly, but no. It wasn’t the dam. It couldn’t be the dam, John’s men were in _quarantine_ —

“It’s the bottled water. The bulk-bought shit the preppers have everywhere. There’s something in it, Rook. Someone’s poisoned the whole fucking county.”

 

 

Funny—

Rook had thought it was just him.

 

 

Staci had to run to catch up, a jog to match Rook’s long strides. “Where the hell are you going?”

“There’re long range radios at Dutch’s place, in Mary May’s, even fucking _John_ has broadcast equipment if we have to—”

“You put that out there and there’ll be a panic,” and Rook had to laugh because _panic_ had been weeks ago, _panic_ had become unsustainable and drained to leave just greywater at the bottom of a dishwasher, the dregs of fear that sat and stagnated, “Rook, fucking _listen_.” Staci caught his arm. The tendons there screeched, rusted over. Staci’s eyes were red and brown and split with it, leaked out into the fine veins of his face and there was a gleam there Rook knew, fire in the underbrush. “There are people taking red peggies,” he snapped, “and right now, they’re trying to be subtle. This county goes up in a panic and they’re going to just _burn_ us, Rook.”

“I know what you’re saying, and I know you’re right,” Rook said, forced even because he _did_ but Mary Mary had a soulmate, Hudson, Jerome – Tara by the boat sheds had one and she was fucking _ten_. “But we have to tell them, they have a right to _know_.”

He’d been drinking that water. Everyone had been because there was _bliss_ in the river (fucking _bliss_ ) and the taps didn’t work most of the time, everyone had been drinking that goddamn water, peggies and civilians and militia and John, John and Jacob and _Joseph_ —

He’d been drinking that water. He wasn’t the only one.

“I know that!” Staci snapped. “But we can’t just blare it out to everyone!”

Rook didn’t move. Staci scowled. “I said we _can’t_ , Rook!”

He was right. He was right and Rook turned and cursed, his hands flexed uselessly because he had to do something, there was _something_ sitting on the edge of his mind made of poisoned water, men in black vans and Eli taking _Wheaty_ of all people but it wasn’t coming together – it was on the other side of some door, voice muffled while Rook strained to hear, tried to force the lock.

Staci waited for him to calm down; it took longer than he liked. Rook pulled himself together, the bliss-tainted length of him and his wounds and the frustration set to boiling and he forced it into the right shape, The Sinner and The Deputy with his hands on his hips, slow breaths with a clenched jaw.

“Fall’s End,” he said eventually. Stiffly. “We need out of the Whitetails,” _not fucking around Rook_ , “and they’ll listen to me. That’s a good start.”

Staci nodded. “Makes sense,” he agreed. “How do you want to get there?”

Rook waved dismissively, brushed off a trivial detail. “Cross the Moccasin, follow it down past Clagett Bay. We can steal a truck once we reach the road.”

“Good, good.” Staci had his arms folded but not the slant to his hips that meant he was mad, that meant he was spoiling for a fight. The language of Staci something Rook had learned through nightshifts and commiserating over nicknames said too loud from dispatch. “That’s where they’ve got Hudson, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Sick Hudson, who hadn’t been trialled like Staci. Who hadn’t had the bliss forced into her until something gave, but might not be too late to help.

Who was with Mary May, who didn’t have a phone, but was on an open frequency. Who’d be listening, if the right voice said something at the right time; if a peggie made a _mistake_ and Rook asked nicely enough for there to be one. “I have an idea,” Rook said, and started checking pockets. “I think I can – I think I can get a message through, if I can just—” while Staci waited impatiently. Rook hissed. “I just need my – my phone,” and his hand touched an empty pocket. Staci was looking at him expectantly and then his gaze dropped, both of them realised at once.

“Oh, fuck you,” Staci said, with feeling.

Rook groaned because Tammy had his phone, Joseph’s voice in her grip. “I’m _sorry_.”

“You’re _sorry_ , well, that changes everything.” Staci shot Rook a glare as he slumped against the wall beside Rook. “You,” he said real slow ( _I know what I’m doing, asshole_ in the hardware store), “are _stupid_ and I _hate_ you.”

Rook grimaced at him, slow-tired enough to confirm even without an easy, “sure,” and he let his head fall back against the ruined wood. A moment and then he squinted at the sky. “That look like snow to you?”

Staci smacked him. Snapped his wrist fast so his hand flicked out and hit Rook’s wound with the back of it, made him hiss with surprise and pain. “It had better not be,” he groused. He got back to his feet with a grunt of effort, brushing pine needles off his pants. “Get up,” he ordered. “We’ve gotta get further from the base. We can’t radio until we’re out of Tammy’s range, but if we can reach the valley we might be able to get them to meet us for the last stretch.”

Rook held out a hand for help and Staci just laughed incredulously, gestured at Rook’s entirely too much Rook, the long stretch of his body.

 

 

Rook stood on his own. He didn’t have much of a choice.

 

 

-

 

 

They didn’t make quick progress, and it was only mostly Rook’s fault. The bliss fucked with his depth perception, his inner ear and made pain rocket through him at random, left him gasping against trees while his eyes watered. Staci had a shorter stride and wasn’t moving right; steady, with purpose but too vigilant, flinching, a prey animal with a mouth full of sharp teeth still brand new. The ground was littered with the debris of flooding, the wreckage left by the rain (finally over) that made everything treacherous.

 

It was half an hour of not-fast enough before they found the first radio tower.

 

“What the hell?” Staci murmured, touching the base of one. It was still and silent and _new_ – there was another just visible on the rise, no further than half a mile through the forest. It had a large transmitter in the middle, suspended in cables snaking down to a generator next to it, humming happily.

“Wolf towers?” Rook offered. He’d blown one up last time, and it had the same speakers but Staci shook his head.

“No. They planted those out in the mountains and they’re always manned. Trapped, too, that’s the whole point. There’s nothing here.”

The radio tower stood fifteen, twenty feet tall and somehow worse for its stillness. Man-made and just left there the way Jacob didn’t just _leave_ things, so Rook stepped back. “How many are there?” he wondered.

Staci pointed. “There’s another one there.” Turned again. “There.”

“Right down to the river.” Rook shaded his eyes with his hands to see down the valley way to the river, the distant islands that split the Henbane. “I don’t like it,” he muttered. “It feels like they’re up to something. There’s too much going on for it not to be related.”

Staci eyed him. “We have a plan,” he said warily.

“Yeah,” Rook agreed. He pulled his binoculars off the pack and focused them in, mentally mapping the temporary towers until the dots clustered around the map in his mind, denser around a thinner spot in the trees. Probably a building, but the forest too dense to see through.

“We have a job to do,” Staci added. “There’s no reason to think this is _relevant_ , Rook.”

“Yeah,” Rook said again, except for how he looked at Staci side-on because he’d been a deputy, and Staci had been a deputy, and coincidence was for when Hudson didn’t want to fill out paperwork.

Staci narrowed his eyes. “No, Rook.”

 

 

Staci wasn’t strong enough to lift Rook. But he wasn’t strong enough to stop him, either.

 

 

The towers were concentrated around a stop in the road – a shitty diner by the wayside that Earl had loved and everyone in their right mind had hated, shitty coffee and the kind of pancakes that bounced. Not enough of them to stand out if someone wasn’t looking from the top-down like Rook and Staci had been, just another bizarre fixture of a county gone crazy if you hadn’t been there to see that shape that crazy was.

They settled on an overlooking ridge just after dark, focused on the beacon that the camp made. Rook crawled forward on his belly to lie beside Staci at the edge and lifted his binoculars.

It was crawling with mercenaries. Two trucks out front and at least five vans in the staff parking lot of the fucking _Grill Steak_ , who used minute-steak in Montana and got away with it for two minutes before the townsfolk had rioted. They’d set up a barricade on the road, floodlights blinding in both directions and there were soldiers moving back and forth quickly, radios lifted and guns at the ready. Crates marked _Explosives_ at the centre, armed men standing guard while the radio towers loomed darkly, hidden in the trees like sentinels.

At the _Grill Steak._

Confused, Rook cast his mind back over the area. Tried to picture roads and landmarks, his own trail blazed across it and the bases he’d already taken. Thought about it and the map wrote one large red line, an artery of the county primed for embolism.

Joseph’s island. That road ran to _Joseph_.

Rook swallowed and lowered the binoculars slowly. “They came to the Whitetails,” he whispered, “to Jacob’s backyard, and they decided to try for _Joseph_ ,” and Staci was shaking his head next to him, slow.

“Suicide,” he replied just as quietly, the kind of wonder that horror could make. “Let’s go.” He pushed himself up off his belly and went to crawl back before Rook shushed him. The men below had slowed, heads jerked up. Stilled themselves after a while except for the way they kept looking, ears pricked for a noise that didn’t reach Rook clearly until Staci stopped the rustling of his movements.

“ _We have been invaded_.”

Rook jerked like he’d been shot. Jacob’s voice had announced it, lined with static. A light on the radio tower had lit up. The speakers were irregularly placed and it made his voice wash over them at different levels, made him everywhere and nowhere when he said,

“ _I know you’re here. I know where you are, I know where you’re **weak**. You think your hostages will protect you.”_

The mercenaries had been taking the dead – but Rook had been underground while Jacob wore black, and he glanced at Staci questioningly.

Staci was shuddering all over, quaking in his fucking boots and his eyes were compulsively downcast like a blow was waiting from above, like a dog made nervous. Rook put his hand on his shoulder and he flinched hard enough to dislodge him, Rook’s hand fell uselessly to his side. Something was happening in Staci at the sound of Jacob’s voice – that tone of menace made to sit, made idle, like it was part of Jacob and nothing to do with the words themselves. Casual. Careless, except for how it wasn’t.

“ _They won’t_ ,” Jacob said simply.

The men below were looking around, trying to find the source of the noise. Uselessly; it was everywhere, speakers dotting the mountainside and Jacob’s rough voice from all sides. “ _You think you can come here and take our people. You think you can put your hand in the jaws of the beast without being **bitten** , well.”_ The crackling of the radio turning amusement to the roar of flames, the split-spitting of trees coming crashing down in embers because there was a fire in Jacob and the forest just burned, “ _time to feel the teeth. The weak have their purpose,_ ”

and Rook was holding his breath, he was _waiting_ for it, for,

“ _meat_ ,” and it cut out. Some of the men below were looking at each other – little gestures to break the tension, of wondering, of strained amusement and,

red-black shapes, moving silently through the trees down the way. Approaching fast and quiet, practised. Jacob’s hunters moving in for the kill but only a few, nowhere near as many as there were mercenaries which didn’t make any sense to Rook because those were hunters, they were guerrilla warfare with poisoned arrows so why, why would—

Another burst of white noise. The speakers came to life again and the noise of it was gold-scratchy, a warm crackle like vinyl in his grandmother’s living room as the floor dropped out.

“ _No_ ,” yanked out of Rook and he took an automatic step forward, Staci’s tugging at his elbow a nothing weight and the towers lighting up all over the fucking mountainside ( _my men were disappearing_ ) with a crackle, bathing the dark trees in alarm-red flares of light because the mercenaries had gone missing in the Whitetails but then they’d come _back_ and,

“Jacob!” Rook shouted into the radio he scrabbled for, deafened by the crackling roar of notes starting, “Jacob, stop!” but the music swelled. It swam through the air like a visible wave, a wall of sound, _only you_ and men in black starting to writhe, to cover their ears while their friends tried to steady them, friends who didn’t see the enemy in them yet,

in Rook,

because everything was starting to burn at the edges ( _only you can_ ), Staci was still trying to pull him back but Rook was too big, Rook was

 

_cull the herd_

 

strong.

 

-

 

 

“Rook.”

Rook gasped awake.

The world was white. It didn’t register – Rook stared mindlessly until his eyes adjusted, until seams of grey settled in it. He stared up at the pale, overcast sky and he was lying on his back, limbs akimbo. Feeling started creeping back in like he’d given himself permission by remembering he should – cold, first. The kind that gripped and seeped because it already found a home in the soft tissue under the skin, and then pain. He was cold and sore and _heavy_ and the ground beneath him was wet. There was an overpowering smell of blood and a sporadic sparking noise nearby, like a broken fuse while white flecks drifted down – the first snow of the season and not an excited kid in sight. Just the way the air stung cold-metallic in the true cold, when the world froze over.

His thoughts were rejecting themselves, synapses sparking but not meeting right. Words scattering and impressions of redness and rage, of something grim and bloody and his hands hurting, hurting and he had to get up. Rook tried to shift and the stab wound in his stomach took him back down, tied him to the weights lining his limbs and kept him there. He steeled himself to try again.

He had to get up,

unless he didn’t. The ground was leeching heat from him, leaving him with his blood gone sleet and the silence, suffocating just because it was inside instead of out and the thought was there because he had to get up – unless he didn’t.

He didn’t.

He could stay down and wait for the snow to fall and cover him, to melt against his skin until it didn’t and he’d done enough, he must have. This must have been enough life to satisfy, for him to have permission to go already.

Rook closed his eyes and let himself lie there. Cold and alone and done, the knot of fear and worry and _please_ unravelling in the centre of him like the stab wound had gone septic, unwinding until his eyes started to sting and his throat felt thick and he opened his eyes again, forced himself to sit up because the world wouldn’t wait for Rook to be ready again.

Safety off, Rook looked around and all he could see was bodies.

A blond woman stared sightlessly out of a ruined eye by his elbow, throat savaged beneath a half-destroyed face. All-black fatigues and more around him, at least three within arm’s reach and a ruined building still smoking nearby, burnt down to the steel supports. The snow was settling like icing sugar, not thick enough to do anything but dust and white-gild bodies scattered over the killing field he’d woken up in. Enough blood to have pooled under him and gone thick, gone clinging the way blood did outside a body, coating the back of him and settled into the skin of his bare forearms. A radio tower nearby was silent, the speaker dangling by a sparking cord and the generator struggling to keep up.

Rook looked down at himself. He wasn’t hurt, or not more than he had been. Except that his knuckles were bloody – they were a fucking mess. The skin of his hands had toughened since the first time he’d punched a man, years ago, but the skin was split unevenly over his knuckles and the joints were swollen just a little.

Rook turned them over. They remained his hands, remained stained but he kept doing it until something finally stuck, into one word alone was enough to jolt him out of it because

 _Staci_.

Rook scrambled to his feet and the world swam, curled with nausea that he pushed through to call, “Staci!” in a voice just a croak before he swallowed to try again, breaking rough through weakness. “Staci!”

His legs tried to give out, wobbling under him like a faun until he rallied, sent steel through them to straighten. He called and searched and there was a dead peggie hunter, a trail of destruction ( _keep going_ ) until Rook had reached what must have been another, smaller group of the soldiers in black and gone to town on them ( _good_ ) and left them crumpled, limbs unmoving under the drifting flecks of snow. He braced his hands on his knees and tried to suck in enough air because Staci, where was _Staci_ who had helped him, who _knew_ him,

No.

Rook shook his head.

No. He had to focus. He had to stop, slow down. He had to stop reacting and start responding to the fucking situation, he had to _think_.

He swallowed. Stood slowly, stiff limbs feeling the stretch. Aching like they’d been well-used, like the slaughter around them hadn’t been a work months in the making, signposted by every gas station and camp he could fight his way through.

He and Staci had been on the cliff. He could see it from where he stood. He’d been on the cliff when the towers went off, when the song crooned in tenor through the mountains, and that was where he had to start.

But first he would need a fucking jacket.

The shirt he was in was thick but soaked, something that almost fit right but didn’t. He checked over the bodies and found someone only one, maybe two sizes smaller just out of sheer muscle mass and stripped him, noted the bullet holes in the side that had split the man open from obliques to thigh. It was damaged but warmer than his and Rook crouched (knees cracking) to look over the bodies, trying to calm himself with the familiar and flexing his fingers to try and get circulation back, since there was no fucking chance there’d be gloves that fit him.

Nothing remarkable. Not at first. But there was a smaller man wearing more layered black near the edge, crushed under an empty bliss barrel. Neck snapped but face just caved in like an old mineshaft (support strut snapped), a ruin of bone and blood. A better radio, only a handgun and a thick patch on his shoulder – a seam hidden that Rook sliced open. He had to fish for it, fingers numb and swollen with violence grasped the edge of a laminated card and he read

_Callum Ford_

and

_Army, Active Service_

as white noise crept in around his vision; as the high ring of tinnitus started to clear and just left silence, the still quiet of corpses on the ground. Filled not just with Rook but with those words over and over, _active service_ and men with black vans, a whole county dropping off the fucking radar and no one saying a word.

 _Army, Active Service_.

 

 

Rook had fallen from a cliff before.

He recognised the feeling.

 

 

Rook picked his way up to the ridge on autopilot. The last place he’d seen Staci ( _Active Service_ ) before the mercenaries (before the _soldiers_ ) had heard Jacob’s voice. The first and last time they would. He climbed up slowly, stiffly, limbs warming but worn already and a long way to fall. He got to the top and caught his breath, lifted his head to see.

Rook was good at hunting, but not because he excelled at picking up trails already cold. He was good at it because he had the prey drive of a starving wolverine and that took him over rough ground, kept him going as long as he could smell blood and fear and that was enough, usually; it got him as far as he needed to, but there was no blood where he remembered seeing Staci last. No sign of a struggle or unrest in the underbrush but Rook went forward in the red rooms, never back. He might have gone for the enemy he could see rather than the one behind, and it was all he could hope that Staci had taken the hint and run.

He might have. Staci had been a prisoner of Jacob and knew what that song meant. He might have, might have. He was strong (Strong) and he knew better. Rook knelt there and tried to see a sign, any sign in the quiet but a broken twig was just a broken twig and a lack of blood might have been a relief but it also wasn’t _helpful_.

Staci, gone. Eli, gone. Fucking _Callum Ford (Army),_ gone, and Rook stood with empty hands for a long while because nothing wasn’t a feeling, _nothing_ was a state of being without an answer and how his body had taken so much but couldn't rest yet, couldn't  _lie down_.

 

Go. But come back.

 

Rook reached for his radio. Lifted it numbly and pressed the button. “Jacob?” he asked quietly.

Nothing.

He tried again. “… This is the deputy for Jacob Seed, over.”

The speaker sparked. The snow fell. No one answered. Rook depressed the button ( _Rook, this is **Rook** for Jacob, Jacob_ ) but the radio sat silently.

 

Rook listened. No one answered.

 

In the end it came down to the plan. He and Staci had agreed. Over Moccasin, past Clagett. To Fall’s End and not to this bloodbath, the trap for someone else that Rook had stepped into anyway.

It was a small comfort, being right. It was a small comfort without Staci, without Boomer, without _Peaches_ but he had to keep going because that was what Rook _did_ ; he listened and he kept moving, he did _what he had to do_ and he couldn’t just lie down, so he went to check the vans by the staff parking.

One had exploded. He couldn’t find it in him to be surprised.

They hadn’t been decent enough to keep the keys in the ignition but Rook cracked the back of one anyway and had to hurtle back when a red peggie, bound and tied, lunge for him with snapping teeth. _Hostages_ , Jacob had said, and Rook slammed the doors shut on the woman’s snarling. The next was no better and Rook couldn’t - he couldn’t just _drive around_ with red peggies going crazy in the back, who the fuck did that, so he cursed himself and cursed the vans and he checked his compass and made for the woods, the deafening silence in them.

He was seriously considering the cliff again when he heard the engines. Heard the mean thrum of six-cylinders, the kind of shitboxes peggies drove for lack of better options that made Rook’s thieving fingers twitch, swollen or not.

Trucks. There were _trucks_ on the road and they could cut a trip in half, into fifths but Rook just had a rifle without a proper sight and his pistol so he tripped back to the road, searching his pockets the whole while to try and find something that could stop them. He stopped before he broke the treeline, a moment of lucid in the face of ease, of a fucking _heater_ before he made himself a target to a peggie with horsepower. Jacob had set a trap but Jacob liked to be _sure_ , Jacob wouldn’t leave well enough alone because he didn’t know how and radio or not, that was something.

Only,

it wasn’t a truck. It was a column.

It was five in a convoy, trucks not bullet-dented or bloodied, white-winding up the road and Jacob’s peggies didn’t _have_ white trucks, he went for dull grey with machine guns on the back (had shot Rook down before) and peggies  _didn't travel that way_ so Rook was on his feet, he was scrabbling for a radio as they crunched over barricades and the bodies of mercenaries, “Stop!” into the transceiver, too loud by half in the middle of unknown woods but, “ _stop_!” again and a pregnant pause, the sound of it growing fainter before,

“ _Rook?”_ a sharp voice asked (sharply) and Rook sank to his knees in the mud, the mire it had made of the thin dusting of snow.

 

 

The convoy stopped. It was that easy.

 

 

The truck in the middle swerved out to park at the side, branded door opening while peggies left their cars on either side, fanning to the sides. Rook came out of the trees, a spectre in blood and mud and the craving in his hands that made the peggies hoist their guns as John hopped out, Rook’s long strides eating up the asphalt between them because John in blue and his fucking long coat, dropping from the high cab sure and steady on his feet and enough time for that wary look on his handsome fucking face before Rook collided with him, wrapped his arms around him and almost lifted him from the ground with a crushing hug. Clung to his tense frame like a lifeline and smelled the expensive fucking shampoo John used, the laundry powder he stole from Joseph because John liked to _share_ and felt the shocking warmth of that body against him.

A long stretch of Rook’s large, unsteady inhales before John’s hands slowly came to rest on his back, arms lifting to wrap around him first lightly, then harder when Rook started shaking, just trembling down his spine because he was holding too much in him but still too much to go. There was an army ID badge in his pocket, red rooms in his head and John, fisting his hands in the back of Rook’s bloody jacket and holding on hard enough to hurt his bruised ribs (fucking _Pat_ ) while he breathed.

It felt like something again. Blurred edges settling into lines, into limits. It felt like enough, only,

“Who the  _fuck_ is Pat?” John’s muffled question against his chest,

and Rook’s laugh sounded like a sob.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what, Rook, just sit in the back and enjoy the heater and maybe make out a little. Just take a break for five fucking minutes, jesus.
> 
> Title from Who Are You, Really? by Mikky Ekko.


	27. you better make me (better)

 

 

The diner had been hooked up to some power by someone – likely the mercenaries, keen to keep the lights on. There were crates stacked by where the counter used to be, unlabelled. The heater whirred ineffectually while Rook sat in one of the broken booths with John, where John had kicked the table out of the way so there was room for their legs.

Rook felt drugged, eyes heavy while John sat across and looked at him. Felt it like a physical thing, John’s scrutiny on his hands, his arms, the dried blood around his neck. John. Hot and clean and _right there_ , not bloodied or broken (breaking) under Rook’s hands like everything else.

Staci. He hadn’t found Staci.

Rook was still shaking. Just every now and again, aftershocks on his personal Richter scale.

“Jacob’s trap,” John assumed. Arch, looking down from the great heights of faith, John the Baptist and the Herald and not touching Rook, sitting across and not beside. “He told you to leave.”

“Tied up.”

John snorted. “Of course, I should have known.” His hand was on his own folded knee and Rook could feel the ghost of fingerprints embedding in the top of his spine, sinking in past the aftershocks to leave friction ridges on his nerves. “Look at you – you’re a fucking mess. What have you done to yourself now? Couldn’t find any helicopters to jump out of?”

“I don’t know,” Rook answered wearily. “I don’t remember. The song makes—”

(bone grinding under heel and blood spraying, viscera cooling across his chest and a man gurgling, blood foaming on his lips)

Rook licked his lips. Tasted copper. “I don’t remember,” he said again.

“Jacob,” John said dryly. “Can’t just kill them, no. It has to be the brainwashing and the _animal slideshows_. You’re just covered in – I can’t even tell if any of that is _yours_. Are you actually hurt, or just stupid?”

Words with that John flavour but the wrong tone, too tense. The John who kicked chairs across rooms before smiling sweetly, the one with too many faces and a knife in his hand and who’d never touched Rook, never shaken apart (shaken him).

Rook’s mother hadn’t been affectionate. Not past a certain point. It was just another thing that made Rook Not Alike, Not Them, the ones who rolled their eyes at fussing and lips pressed to their cheeks. Rook hadn’t had to smudge lipstick off his face and he’d taken it personally – it wasn’t until he was older and making eye contact across rooms broken fast, catching glances away and hesitant touch, that he understood it was personal, but not in the way he’d thought. Not until he realised kindness was complicated and his mother had tried so hard to make him ready – hadn’t wanted him getting used to something he wasn’t going to have again.

“Rook?” John prompted impatiently, pulling him out of the fog of memory, of therapeutic distance.

“Sorry.” Rook tried a smile. It didn’t take. “Jacob… is he coming?”

John tilted his head. “What do you think?”

 

 

John didn’t touch him but Jacob did. Jumped out of his truck and controlled Jacob, steady Jacob, came inside and shoved him so hard he slammed back-first into the wall by the counter. “I told you to get out,” Jacob growled, too close, too far into Rook (to cut out), “what part of that didn’t you understand?”

“Hi Jacob,” Rook managed. “How was your day?”

Jacob shoved him again, “you fucking _idiot_ ,” and grabbed him by the nape of his neck, shook him like a disobedient pup.

“He is,” John agreed, hoisting himself up to sit on the counter beside them. “He just can’t help himself.”

“‘Hi, Rook’,” Rook wheezed uncomfortably, trying not to breathe too deep because that brought him into too much contact with Jacob and he was hot enough to brand, all in black and radiating heat. “‘I’m great. I’m so glad you’re alive, even though you got stabbed and brainwashed—’”

John leaned forward. “Stabbed?”

“I should kill you _myself_ ,” Jacob rumbled, pressed in until Rook winced. “Gut,” he said over his shoulder to John, whose mouth twisted irritably.

“Larsson is outside,” he offered, but Jacob sneered.

“He’s a butcher.”

“Well so is Rook,” John shot back. “And Sampson isn’t exactly _available_.”

“I’m already sewn up,” Rook piped up, but Jacob’s hand just tightened on his neck.

“Anything else?”

John flicked a hand. “I didn’t strip him down, Jacob.”

“That’d be a first,” which twanged, like the rough ground Jacob dragged over had hit a stone.

“Stabbed in the shoulder too,” Rook offered. Jacob’s attention back on him was blistering, too much but it wasn’t the two of them looking at each other like that, it was a painful kind of relief because at least he understood it. Jacob yanked him away from the wall and shoved him back into the seat.

“You were captured. Where?” Jacob asked, terse and militant.

Rook shrugged, shifted himself from a sprawl into a sitting position. “It doesn’t matter,”

“It fucking _matters_ ,” Jacob said darkly, but,

“Why did you come out of the woods, Rook?” John asked suddenly. He threw himself into the seat across from him, crossed his legs and dared him to speak. “You left. You turned your phone off and walked away, you shut us out and dropped off the face of the earth. Are we supposed to think you just… changed your mind, just like that?” A twist to his mouth, a crease in the genial wall he’d made of himself. “Do you think we’re gullible, is that it?”

“Why not?” Rook asked, head lolling back against the seat so he could look at him. “I believed you.”

John sucked in a breath. “That’s not fair,” he ground out.

“No,” Rook said. “it isn’t,” but then he’d never had the frame of reference. “I know where the sickness comes from.”

Jacob leaned forward. “Where?” right away. The gleam that must have seemed like a light in another life but just a reflection off a killing edge.

Rook smiled. It bubbled up lopsided, a curve before it popped. “Just like that, huh?”

Jacob settled back in his chair. “What’ll it cost us?” The tone of locked gates, barbed wire and wolves on chains.

Rook sighed. “I want this to be over,” he said, and he had to keep going when Jacob went very, very still. “This war. The murder, the reaping, whatever you want to call it. We’re all under attack now. I’ll tell you everything, but we help the civilians. Everyone gets out, cult included.”

Jacob’s face was inscrutable, but John, John wasn’t glowering, wasn’t like Staci – he had an anger like mania, all teeth and hard-fast in the eyes. “Help them?” he asked, voice lowered to a shadow under ice. “Help the resistance, the ones who are attacking us, who want us turned into _fertiliser_ —”

“The people that you four unleashed your followers on, yes,” Rook shot back, rousing (ice cracking) and Jacob gripping his shoulder hard when he leant forward, that brutal strength ready to drag him back. “Do you think I want to ask you for this, that I would even try if there was a choice?”

“There’s a choice,” John assured him, seething, “you just don’t want to see it, you don’t _believe_.”

“I _believe_ that counties don’t drop off the map without people noticing, that an entire sheriff’s department and a federal marshal don’t vanish without being on the fucking news.”

“The Collapse is coming—”

“The Collapse is here!” Rook snapped, made loud with the hand he slammed against the crooked table, with the need to grab John and shake him until his teeth rattled. “Everyone is either dying of this sickness or drowning in bliss, soldiers are dragging people off and closing in further every day and if we can’t stop fighting there won’t be anyone left to save!”

“What if you’re wrong?!” John threw back and threw out from somewhere dark-red and bloody and Rook reeled but didn’t back down because _he knew a slaughter when he saw one_ and,

“I’m _not_.”

A muscle in his jaw worked and Rook was covered in blood, mud and stolen clothes but he felt exposed to the knife that was Jacob, the needles of John. Breathing hard in front of them in the cold air (cooling) what had he done, he’d _shouted_ at them when he knew Jacob never faltered, when John was—

Tightening his hands in his lap, flexing and releasing and almost vibrating, the high whirr of the new-shine gears in him going. John shifted but Rook couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t. He heard the rustle and, “ _Jacob_ ,” said low, hoarse, and then Jacob spoke too.

“Remember – he wants something,” and

oh

Jacob was good at what he did and Rook bled, just for that (no hands) when Rook wasn’t the one who lied because he had Bites on the surface and they did the talking for him. Made it pointless and heat lurched to the surface of his shoulder (of his face) when he got to his feet, hot and humiliated and already talking,

“fine,” deep and distant and strange, the flood of words spilling cold, “fine –  _don’t touch me_ ,” when John lifted a hand because Rook’s heart was pounding in his ears and it felt like he was shaking all the way down to his ribs, to the small quivering thing in his chest. He stood there, face hot with shame (with _himself_ ) and his hands fisted because this wasn’t a cult who could be enraged into attacking, this was an army and a toxin and Rook by himself again and he was big enough to take it,

which meant he always had to.

John kept his hands up ( _no hands_ like he needed them) and he was wary. Of Rook with his bloody grip, his scars, his impulse control stored in a dog who-knew-where. “It’s in the bottled water,” Rook said, steadily, steady. “The mercenaries aren’t mercenaries, not all of them,” and he fished out the ID card, _Callum Ford_ ’s blood-edged face thrown onto the seat beside John and, “I’ll do it myself,” even though he couldn’t, he knew he was running out of time and out of himself. That he was so lucky to have started with so much in the first place. “Get out of my way,” he said when Jacob put himself between Rook and the edge of the booth, trapped Rook between him in the window, but,

it wasn’t Jacob he had to worry about. It was John who took him down, a flash from the side and Rook’s knee kicked out in a flash of pain, John with his long limbs and knife-sharp mind taking his legs out and Jacob there when Rook tried to elbow John in the fucking face. Grabbing and twisting it back, couching between Rook’s legs while John got his arm around his neck and held onto him from the side, trusting Jacob to keep Rook from hurting him.

Trusting Jacob – John, spoilt from soulmates no matter how deep his scars ran and, “no,” John said harshly into Rook’s ear, half in his hair, his clever hands dug into Rook’s shoulder and around his chest. “I’m not fucking watching you leave again, not this time.”

Rook licked his lips – they were cracked, drying in the cold air. He met Jacob’s stare head-on. “You can’t stop me,” he told him, “not while I’m alive.”

Jacob nodded, sank forward from his crouch onto his knees and was even closer, just like that. “I know,” he mused, keeping a firm grip on Rook’s wrist and holding Rook to save John, the wrong kind of bible story. “You’re right,” he said apropos of nothing, talking to Rook but looking over his shoulder to where John tensed. “They’re moving in. They’ll take the county at this rate,”

“Jacob—”

“No, John,” Jacob said false-lightly, his free hand settling on Rook’s thigh and calm, too calm. “They will. If it’s in our water, we’ll need it replaced with supplies from outside the zone and that’d take too long, they’re counting on it. They’ll wait until we dry out. But here’s the thing, deputy,” and Jacob looked at him like it was something important, unblinking and intense. Boring into him with those blue fucking eyes. “Those survivalists in the resistance, they’ve got tanks. Rainwater and filters and exactly what we’d need to save ourselves before we lock down and wait for this septic, dying cesspit of a country to come down around our ears. We even have you _,_ ” squeezing tightly, “and they are the weak, we are the strong. So why shouldn’t we just take? They can’t stop us. That’s just the law of nature.”

“I’m strong too,” Rook snapped. “I’ll get out. No matter where you put me, I’ll get out. I’ll get out and if you _think_ ,” straining against Jacob’s grip even when it hurt, even when the bones of his wrist creaked in warning, “that those _soldiers_ have caused you trouble then you haven’t seen anything yet. I’ll make you bleed for every fucking thing you take and when your men are too scared of every dark corner because I might fucking be there, when all my friends are red then dead then gone, I’m going to walk into the first outpost I see and I’ll let them take me down. I’ll tear them apart and drag them into the dark until it won’t matter how scared they are of you, of hell, of _Joseph_ , they’ll gun me down to save their own goddamn lives and I’ll have been _right_ ,” he hissed, he seethed, he _promised_ them. “I’ll have been _right_ because you won’t feel a fucking _thing_. You’ll hear it when what’s left of your precious faithful come back with my body in a goddamn _bag_ —”

He heard the _crack!_ before he saw Jacob move. Sat there with eyes wide, trying to catch his breath and Jacob’s scarred arm reaching right past him, panting like he’d been the one yelling and _livid_ , river-blue turned to flood and bright, teeth bared. Rook let his eyes slide to the side, John very still behind and beside him and Jacob had put his fist through the wood panelling that lined the walls.

“ _No_ ,” Jacob rumbled in a voice like an avalanche.

John’s arm was tight around Rook, the tension strung through him like an instrument quavering a high _e_ , and

“ _no_ ,” Jacob repeated roughly. Jacob straining against himself in front of him, John’s expression cracked open beside and there was a time Rook would have enjoyed that. Would have thought it was a job well-done and struck at the marrow, not felt the exposed-bone lurch that sickened him then.

“What do you _want_ , Rook,” John asked, and Rook hesitated, he hesitated when there was no fucking time for it because the wall was in him still, a wall of silence and alone (and _unnecessary_ ) that stood between him and them in his dreams and in his thoughts and inside Rook, always. The layers atop it that Rook had built himself because prisoners became jailers when they learned the tools well enough to forget everything else, so Rook dug his fingernails (peeled back, blood to the quick) and tore,

“I want you to _help_ me,”

out from the mortar of him, stripped down to sinew and the smallness hidden in him. Small. _Small_ , a kid with his legs crossed in front of a teacher but not yet a counsellor, nor a doctor, because the kid was the one who’d believed and was the part of Rook who didn’t know better. Small and exposed in front of John, all edges and his breath escaping fast. In front of Jacob, quiet like drowning and his fist still in the fucking ruined wall.

The age of silence and the three of them. Sitting in it.

“If you – you can’t take this back this time,” John said eventually, voice hoarse, “you can’t do this then take it away, I’m _selfish_ ,” like it was something worth being selfish over. Like he wanted Rook not just strong but weak, the pathetic, lonely bones of him on display for him, for Jacob with his sharp teeth and the river rushing through him, out his blue eyes to leave him red and solemn in the pale light.

Jacob, who let go of his wrist to reach out to press his hand to the side of Rook’s neck instead, but didn’t speak. Just looked at Rook until he folded forward and into him, bracketed by Rook’s legs and holding him between the two of them.

 “Jacob,” John said helplessly over Rook’s head, and Jacob sighed heavily into the side of Rook’s face, close enough for Rook to smell the gunpowder and blood and pine trees.

“I’ll talk to Joseph,” he said grimly. “But this is a shitshow,” and Rook didn’t understand, it just wouldn’t connect that John and Jacob had,

that they were,

“Joseph has seen the Collapse,” John pointed out, never wavering in that fucking book or in the light he held reserved for his brother, the prophet. “If this is it, if this is what he has planned for us then he’ll listen,” and,

“what?” Rook whispered,

“You know Joe,” Jacob replied. “He’s worse than—”

“What?” Rook repeated, eyes forced wide and heartbeat too close to the surface, right into Jacob’s hand and John’s arm and the space his ribs made between them, closing by the second. Rook’s hands spasmed, lashed out to clutch at the arm around his chest, the front of Jacob’s shirt. “What are you doing, I don't understand.”

“Because you’re a fucking idiot,” Jacob replied. “Are these hicks going to listen to you?” He pulled back and snapped his fingers, forced Rook to look at him properly. “I’m not leading my men into a trap.”

“They’ll listen,” Rook said distractedly, “but wait, what are you—“

“I’ll go with him.” John toyed with one of the buttons on Rook’s shirt, the man who had to move his hands to think. “They have a little resistance going in Fall’s End. It’d be cute, if it wasn’t so annoying. If things go badly, my people will be nearby. The ones you haven’t used in your goddamn trials.”

“Why?” Rook asked desperately, the ground gone from underneath him when he hadn’t noticed, the missing stair in the dark of a basement and the lurch of a sudden fall.

 

Of Rook, small. Cross-legged and listening when there was no one there.

 

“Because you need it,” John replied. And because it was John, he continued with, “And otherwise you’ll martyr yourself over a fixable problem just to be a brat about your little _friends_. Again,” and Rook was a more than grown-ass man who hadn’t cried in years but his throat was hot and Jacob was uncomfortable, squeezed his thigh.

“If you’re right, if this is what Joseph’s been preparing us for,” Jacob said, “it’s win-win. If it’s not, I’ll tie you down and teach you some manners,” as a threat but John made a protesting noise because yeah, he’d wanted to drag Rook into some private cell since day one.

Rook’s throat worked, trying to make words that he didn’t have the vocabulary for because this wasn’t,

this wasn’t his _life_. His life was apartments without pictures on the walls, bright yellow pamphlets and a childhood spent softening the blow, it wasn’t the mad-bright Seeds giving him what he asked for, it wasn’t them holding onto him in a ruined diner and trying to trust him.

Jacob tried to pull back and Rook wouldn’t let him, he lunged forward as much as he could and wrapped his arm around his neck, kissed Jacob for the third and first time because something was spilling out of him and words just fucked everything up. He heard John’s stifled noise behind and Jacob leaned into it, tilted Rook’s head until it turned messy, the obscene slide of tongue and the kind of slick noise mouths made that had Rook flushing right down his chest.

“I love my life,” John said quietly, startling Rook into chuckling against Jacob’s mouth, earning him a sharp bite because Jacob liked attention more than people thought, they forgot his quiet fury when he stood by John and Joseph. John didn’t pull him away until they broke apart, showed a kind of restraint Rook hadn’t expected but kissed him tentatively like some part of him was still sitting on a bed while Rook put his boots on, then harder when Rook didn’t pull away. Got greedy enough that Jacob ended up grabbed his hand when it started to slide down Rook’s chest ( _goddamnit, John_ ) and frowning at him.

“Really, Jacob,”

“Really, John,” Jacob parroted back and the laugh bubbled up in Rook until his shoulders were shaking, he hung his head to try and muffle his hysteria. “Now get up. We’re wasting daylight.”

 

 

 

The peggies were waiting by the vans when they came out. Rook still numb, white noise trapped under his skin. A hunter sat by a motorcycle in front of Jacob’s beaten truck, dirty enough that kids would have drawn _WASH ME_ on it on gas station parking lots. Another leaned on the machine gun mounted on the back and the peggies seemed awkward around them, a mix of awed and frightened (wolves at the door).

Rook knew the feeling. He hovered when Jacob stopped at the natural divide between his truck and John’s. “I’ll – I don’t have my phone,” Rook said. “But John has his.”

Jacob nodded. “Rook,” he said. “You die and I’ll burn every last inch of the resistance to the ground. Starting with Fall’s End.”

Rook smiled. The small amount he could, like his face had forgotten how. “Should I tell you to be careful too, or…?”

Jacob smirked, reeled him in by his stolen jacket. Slowly, but Rook staggered in without trying to escape, rested his hand tentatively on Jacob’s arm when he got close enough. Stomach tensed like he was still expecting a knife.

“You’re ours,” Jacob said with the smile of a wolf in the dark, “don’t forget again.”

Rook twitched – his head jerked away automatically, he couldn’t look at him. He was still trying to settle the thought in him but it sat uneasy against his life, against the certainty of himself and who he knew himself to be (not-wanted, not-looked-for, not- _for_ -you) and he had to swallow hard against it.

He felt Jacob’s smirk against his cheek. “Thought so,” and he kissed him there in front of every peggie watching, in front of John’s distant, slow clapping. “Now go,” he instructed, pushing Rook back a step. “Then come back. Or I’ll come find you,” in added threat just for Rook, the way he had over the radio a thousand years before ( _you_ _don’t_ _want_ _that_ ,

and maybe how he did.)

Rook turned on autopilot and John was leaning against his truck with his sunglasses on, snow settling white against his dark hair. “Ready?” he asked, twirling his keys around his finger.

Rook looked at him steadily, thought about it. “I’m going to have to tie you up for them to let us into town,” he informed John, who looked like Christmas had come early and was too much of a hot mess for him to take anywhere, but who was hell-bent on going anyway.

He got in the car and the key was in the ignition when he had to stop. Had to set his head on the wheel between his hands (his mother in the parking lot, pamphlets crinkling in his hands) and it swelled like water in his throat.

 

 

Rook knew how to be unwanted.

He’d never learned anything else.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Number by Daughter. Finally. Also it's 2am here and the plants on my balcony rustle now like they do at no other time, what a strange thing to hear.


	28. don't feed it (it will come back)

 

He should have taken Jacob, Rook realised in short order. Jacob knew there was a time and a place for torturing people.

“So this is what it’s like,” John mused as the truck shuddered, clearing the bump between dirt road and the highway. The slow metronome of the windscreen wipers clearing the snow, still falling lightly. “I’ve been taken hostage. Oh, it’s awful,” he drawled, sprawled languidly over the seat to lean on the door and enjoying it too much. “Who knows what you’re capable of.” His voice was too naturally sharp for the languor in it – it made it sly, shaped like a fishing hook.

Rook sighed. “We may as well not bother if you look like you’re going on vacation.”

John put his feet on the dash. Amazingly, really, in his tailored pants and his long, long legs but he did. The kind of kid who sloshed water bottles on roadtrips when some poor bastard needed to piss. “They’re not going to believe I’m disarmed, you know,” he said in a tone of put-upon patience. “If I was this easy to subdue, the entire valley would be chaos. My family would rain _hellfire_ upon them.” He twisted his wrists against the sad excuse for bondage keeping them together. He’d had zipties with him, because of course he had, and sacrificed a set for the illusion too fast.

“I could cut off your finger, take that with me as proof I haven’t turned instead,” Rook mused. “Your hands are distinctive. If I take a thumb I might not wake up with another tattoo.”

John tilted his head, sunglasses a grim line in Rook’s peripheral vision. “… Are you trying to tease me, Rook?”

Rook shrugged a shoulder and John lunged at him snake-fast, hand on his leg and mouth by his ear in a blur. “You’d need both to stop me,” he purred, hand squeezing Rook’s thigh too high up, too high up. “I’m _good_ with my hands.”

“When the fuck did you get out?!” The truck swerved dangerously before John lashed out to jerk the wheel straight just in time.

“Rook,” John said patronisingly, “don’t forget who you’re dealing with,” and when Rook cursed he drew back to his side of the fucking truck, his smile a broad gleam of white to Rook’s right. “Look at you,” he said slyly. “You’re blushing.”

“I should have knocked you out,” Rook said fervently. “It’s not too late,” he added. “I have options. I have means.”

John smirked. “Adorable,” he crooned, leaving his wrist resting on Rook’s shoulder, fingers settling into the hair at the nape of his neck while laughter coloured his voice like a blush, “the hero of the resistance, the _sinner_ ,” the way he tasted the word, “and you’re so _shy_.”

“Means,” Rook repeated, “options,” but when he pulled John’s hand away he just came back to tangle his fingers with Rook’s shy ones. It was a moment of panic, not sure how hard to grip because John was strong but Rook had broken strong hands, would break more before he was done.

“Adorable,” John taunted, and stroked the back of his hand with his thumb. Rook steadied his breathing to the beat of the windscreen wipers. One, two. One, two, John’s fingers laced with his.

One, two. One, two, “John?”

“Yes,” John answered immediately.

“… What if Joseph says no?” Rook asked.

John dropped his voice. “You were meant to be here, with us,” and the air might have been shaking but he spoke surely. Certain, the way he had with hands on followers, threats through a smile on televisions across the county. “This is a test. Joseph Saw it, God’s will has united us. There is no room for doubt.”

The undercurrent of a threat, just the makeup of John. “But,” Rook said, and stopped. _What if he says no_ , he didn’t ask again, because there were missing persons reports with Jacob under Person of Interest back at the station, Eli Palmer and his thousand complaints. Jacob with his red-red hair and his red-black rifle, Rook pulled under by the river finally. Faith Seed before him and then Faith again, down the line to Rook’s face on a flyer no one was ever going to read. But first Joseph who believed, faith the quasar brilliance of the black hole in him, beyond questioning and Jacob ( _go but come back)_ , who liked to be asked.

“Thank you,” Rook said instead, “for,” but he had to stop, it came out strangled as

_(two or more_

and

_permanent)_

“listening to me,” words strained out through his closing throat and sitting behind a wall where Rook listened but no one ever _spoke_ to him, all he’d ever wanted was someone to _speak_ to him and _look_ for him, he just—

One-two, one-two, John’s soft sigh. One-two, one-two, and Rook took the turn-off. The sign for Fall’s End had burned weeks ago.

 

 

-

 

 

Rook tied John up again before they left the truck, once they rolled in sometime in the early afternoon. Made him harmless to people with eyes who still didn’t see John, hadn’t seen him in action, but used his own zipties because the idea of John harmless made Rook’s stomach sour. The air was cold enough for breath to fog in, for John’s shoes to crunch on frost when he jumped out of the cab. Too used to moving with his hands bound ( _not the time_ ) and Rook kept his hand on his gun, circled around so he had a hand on John’s shoulder. “Stay close to me,” he instructed, and John rolled his eyes at him.

“Is there anywhere else worth visiting?” he asked drily. Fall’s End looked worse, somehow, in the early snow. Bleached out under grey clouds and not made shiny by the rain, almost no one visible. Just the man by the far watchtower, who’d seen Rook drive in and hadn’t bothered stopping him to check his car.

Rook, Herald-smuggler. He’d once jumped out of a helicopter and it was still probably the stupidest thing he’d ever done. He jerked his head towards the Spread Eagle and kept John by his side, cautiously approached. “Mary May?” he called.

There was a muffled noise from inside, then one of the side windows shoved open. “Deputy?” Mary May stuck her head out, braced on her forearms to lean through the opening, elbows pressed together in the view men used to bloody themselves over. Face lit up and Rook took a second to memorise that glow, absorbed it while he half-stepped in front of John just as she saw him, as the light there burnt itself out (left ash) and the colour left her face.

“The situation’s changed,” Rook told her. “Let us come inside,” and she must have really fucking loved him, because _ENVY_ carved into her chest and her brother dead and rotting, she threw the door open so hard it slammed against its own frame.

 

Jerome wasn’t far behind. He took up on the other side of the bar with Mary May, wood and glasses and a stony silence all a barricade they could use for cover and his fuck-off calibre gun between them, forcing Rook and John to keep their backs to the door because preachers knew people, he knew it would make Rook twitch.

“So,” Rook said. “The good news is that we know where the infection is coming from,” and then Mary May hurled a bottle of beer towards John with a yell.

Fair enough, all things considered. It certainly set the fucking tone.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?! That’s _John Seed_!” Mary May exclaimed, she almost howled, hand shaking as she flung it out, the dregs of adrenaline. Rook shifted and she froze, eyes going wide.

Rook’s hands were steady as a rock. Adrenaline didn’t crawl in with tremors for him anymore. “The black vans aren’t just mercenaries,” he told her. “They’re the army, they’re with the fucking _government_. We can’t just deal with this ourselves anymore. We need resources and firepower, we need things the cult have.”

“What they _took_ from us,” Jerome corrected, but John just scoffed. “The things they seized by force.”

Rook turned to him. “I just don’t think,” he said slow, _let’s talk about this_ as a deputy for drunk men with broken bottles and guns, “that these soldiers see a difference, they’re just going to _kill_ us.”

Mary May jabbed a finger at John. “Like they want to! They’ve already murdered half the county!”

“And the soldiers are going to murder the rest. If the infection doesn’t get us first.”

Mary May’s eyes were wide and, “we don’t know that!” _beseeching_ , because Rook did and John did and yeah, she did too because he heard that specific kind of desperate, the flavour of saying a thing to reality by railing against the person who said it, just to have someone to argue with.

“I do, Mary,” Rook said. “None of this was an accident,” and it was one thing for it not to be an accident because of a cult, the face of Joseph on it and his Family something to rail against. It was one thing for it to be a madman who could bleed, another to be the broader, the kind of machine with too many cogs to just hit it with a fucking wrench. Rook the wrench, who opened his stupid (blunt-instrument) mouth to say, “they did this to us on purpose. This is a weapon,” and Jerome’s face always appeared younger than he was, but the lines on it added up like the rings of a tree then.

“You think this is some kind of controlled trial.”

Rook nodded. “This is too targeted. We’re cut off geographically, we have a broad representation of Bitten and not, this is all too neat.”

“Do you know what you’re saying?” Jerome asked. “If this is as big as you’re telling us, any effort to find a cure will be pointless. Worse than pointless, they’ll come after us. This wouldn’t be a massacre, it’d be a detonation. They’d need to destroy the valley afterwards, to make sure no traces could be found.”

“I know,” Rook replied. “But they didn’t know everything before they moved in, there’s a way to help the infected already. The bliss counteracts it,” and he watched Mary May pale.

“You can’t be serious!”

“Not for Bitten, Jesus,” Rook protested. “It helps the infected. It’s the only thing that does, Staci was–” in the woods in the dark only you _only you_ “—he was doing a lot better than Joey,” he finished. “The cult controls the bliss and we need it if anyone’s going to get better, if we’re going to stand a chance. If we can get a group out of the valley and make people aware of what’s going on, if this becomes too messy to just sweep under the rug - it’s our only shot.”

Mary May raised her eyebrows. “If they really want to _help_ us, they can just give us the bliss, let us help ourselves with it. Couldn’t you?” she demanded of John, leaning around to see him better but not asking a question, not really. “Not like you don’t have enough of it floating around.”

Rook bit back a sigh the second he heard it, the arch tone John had that had never helped a fucking thing, “I suppose you want us to just throw our faithful in front of bullets for you too, since you’re so incapable of understanding how a _deal_ works. Oh,” he was tapping his chin, Rook could feel him tapping his fucking chin, “unless it’s a sacrifice someone else makes for you. How many days was it after our offer, Mary _May_ , until the deputy here fell on our doorstep?”

Mary May lunged across the bar – it hit her in the waist but she was already scrambling over, Rook had to push her back and her shoulders were so narrow, they were so fucking breakable under his hands but she was hissing, spitting furious.

It ended, but it wasn’t Rook. Jerome slammed his hand onto the counter between them, “enough!” roared, preacher-projection and how Mary May fell back, how Rook’s arm lifted to stop John’s moved forward. John’s shoulders tensed and set back back, the rage trigger of someone else’s faith too sensitive, like they could step on Joseph’s toes so easily.

John didn’t push it. But he didn’t step back, and Mary May tried to catch her breath.

“Let me settle this. Let me make sure we’re all on the same page,” Jerome began. “I am _not_ working with Joseph Seed, I am not working with that fanatical,” voice getting deep in the chest and resonant, “egotistical,” and John had gone still, unblinking and match-bright and head tilted just-so, the blade-ugly smile,

“ _psychotic_ —”

 

 

John was unpredictable in many ways.

But not all.

 

 

“So we agree,” Rook said eventually, finally, in the end. “We work together on this threat and then we leave each other the fuck alone. No more raiding, no more bombing, no more abductions or bliss in the water, are we clear?”

The sun had set hours ago. The generator had kicked in with a whirr for the lights and sat humming behind them, filling the absence that the crickets left when they died in the snow. Rook’s throat was hoarse and Mary May had settled on a chair, skin around her eyes tense. John smiled beatifically where he was tied to the radiator.

“Are we clear?” Rook repeated.

The slash across Jerome’s cheek had stopped bleeding a while ago, but it had hooked into the edge of his mouth ugly. It made his good scowl a better one, already paternalistic and severe and ineffective because Rook hadn’t had a father as a boy, and didn’t need one as a man. “The first sign,” Jerome said, “the first _second_ we suspect something, this deal is off.” He tugged at Rook’s belt where it tied him to the jukebox.

“Fair enough.” Rook looked to Mary May. She didn’t look back. Her jaw was set, hands tense. John had carved sins into her when this all began then torn it free, would always be cast for her in pain and the smell of blood, the slick burn-slide of a blade. He had been for Rook, once. But the shape of it had cracked down the middle, struck with the slow-bitter scent of him and what his skin tasted like and maybe the edge, still, but Rook had grown used to those.

“I’ll tell Jacob,” John said, voice curling around his brother’s name just to be a shit. “My Family is waiting to hear from us,” capitalised with his best _fuck-you_ smile, bright and handsome enough to cut. “Now that the pleasantries are out of the way.”

“You pretentious son of a—”

Rook raised his voice, just steamrolled over. “Once we’re in agreement, we can coordinate. We’ll know more in the morning,” greeted with laughter just shy of hysterical from Mary May.

“He’s not sleeping here,” she scoffed. “You can, but we’ve set up the garage as a holding cell for when we had peggies before. He can stay there while he waits for his master to say _jump_.”

John laughed. “You want to put me in jail?” Rook turned and John shook his head, smirk twisted with scorn. “No. This isn’t all going your way.”

“What part of this has gone _our way_?!” Mary May demanded. “You invaded our homes, your fucked-up ego cult started all of this with your _minions_ —”

“You mean the lost souls your precious county turned its _back_ on,” John snarled, cut off in turn with,

“oh, like you took them in out of the goodness of your heart!”

“There is a _silo_ ,” Rook said loudly because he _wasn’t_ going to shout, “just outside town, with a farmhouse. Where _we_ ,” he added to John, “will be spending the night. It’s only a few minutes away. You can see us, we can see you.”

Jerome frowned and said nothing. His silence did so much of the talking for him that Rook knew ignoring it would get him his way; he could leave it there and Jerome wouldn’t move fast enough to find the words.

“Good. I’m glad we agreed,” Rook bit out. “I am going to get my rifle and then we are going to leave.”

“You have a rifle,” Mary May pointed out, arms folded.

Rook could feel his teeth grinding. “I like that one _better_.”

John looked at him expectantly and Mary May had more bottles, heavier than beer. Rook untied him with a quick flick of his knife, ignored how John rubbed his wrists pointedly and gestured up the stairs. “Don’t leave my sight,” he said wearily. “We’re only here for a few minutes.”

He made John go up first. Rook knew exactly how tempting an unguarded back could be. John’s in particular.

The attic was just how he’d left it. “This is where you were sleeping?” John asked with distaste. He toed the edge of the mattress, swiped a hand over one of the low roof beams and rubbed his fingers together, grimacing.

Rook nodded, slinging his bag by the foot of the bed, the covers still rumpled there.

“Behold – the gratitude they showed their _hero_ ,” John muttered. “A mattress in a dive bar’s attic. Inspiring.”

Rook shrugged. “I have nightmares. It’s more peaceful for everyone.” Felt more secure to him, one way in and just a window out.

“It is private,” John conceded, side-eyeing him.

Heat crawled up Rook’s neck. He crouched by his bag instead of answering, shoved a few spare grenades in. Feeling awkward always made Rook too aware of his hands, made them stupid. Like his limbs were in the wrong place, all of him just as out of place as his mind insisted. His hands felt wrong in his town, in his attic because John was running his all over everything, touching the few things Rook had collected. A bandanna, Boomer’s spare. Some baseball cards and vinyl that John flipped through with interest – imbedding himself in Rook’s curios, leaving his fucking fingerprints all over it all and then turning to Rook before—

“Jacob’s keeping watch for them,” John said, nodding at the bandanna not quite hidden in Rook’s bag when he stood. Understanding. “They always come back.” _They_ always came back, his good girl and his good boy and nights spent curled into fur that was warm and alive because Rook had killed so many people but there were still so many _left_ and they didn’t care when he–

“We should go,” Rook said, trading out for his better rifle and tucking the bandanna out of sight while he was at it. “Come on,” and he went back down the stairs without looking back.

Mary May caught him on the way out. Hooked him by the elbow as John’s footsteps sounded on the staircase after him. “Rook, we can’t trust them,” she hissed like he didn’t fucking know, like he didn’t have firsthand experience of grasping the cult by the pointy end, so (palms cut to hell) he just sighed.

“I’m not asking you to,” he replied. “I’m asking you to trust me, May,” and she must have listened (save your own goddamn life) and let him go.

 

 

-

 

 

The farmhouse attached to the silo was spartan. Not the way Joseph’s house had been, a choice of nothings over somethings and empty space with purpose – plain spartan, poor spartan, the kind where the choice was nothing or more nothing. Fake wood-panelled walls and three rooms, the kind of old patterned carpet even new motel rooms somehow always had. There was a sink, an electric kitchenette and an old tv across from the world’s ugliest green couch that John immediately brightened upon seeing because John was a fucking disaster and like attracted like.

Rook knew places like these. He pointed to the far door. “There’ll be a bed through there, bathroom on the left.”

John stuck by the door, eyeing the green almost-couch. “My men will be here soon to secure the area. Go wash some of the county off you.”

“I don’t like having peggies watching my back,” Rook muttered, but when he scratched his forearm dried blood flaked off it. There was enough that it didn’t really matter how much of it was his anymore, like how a word said often enough stopped being a word and became a sound.

“I don’t like having to deal with godless heretics hiding behind a sanctimonious priest,” John said pleasantly, “but true devotion requires sacrifice. Doesn’t it, Rook?”

It had the ring of church bells in it. Rook beat a quick retreat.

The shower didn’t work, but the sink did. It ran rust-red for minutes while the pipes groaned and Rook peeled filthy bandages off and listened to trucks pulling up outside. Peggies, setting up a perimeter. Not much work, one Rook against a squad of five peggies – not more, maybe less.

Five _men_ , he reminded himself wearily, because it was the years of life that were important,

not the minutes it would take to stop them.

 

 

 

John was flicking through the books on the small bedroom shelf when Rook came out, his too-long hair curling damply around his ears. “Are you going to call Jacob?” Rook asked, towelling it dry.

John scoffed, flicked a bodice-ripper aside. “Jacob wants calls and radio at a minimum in case the lines aren’t secure anymore. But Joseph has prepared us for all of this – he saw it. We’re ready. We’ll talk tonight.”

It took a moment. For Rook’s thoughts to stutter over that, tripping on the final step before the jolt of landing of, “in dreams,” he said. “You meet there.”

John nodded, already looking through the rest of the room and no wonder they had never found Joseph, no wonder they’d coordinated so well even before they took the towers, erected ones of their own. Never apart (not really) because they were _made_ whole—

not born.

The shove surprised Rook – for a moment, he didn’t realise he’d done it.

John hit the mattress hard enough to bounce, his wide blue eyes almost funny except Rook hadn’t meant to, he hadn’t _meant_ to push him and he looked at his hands like they were strangers – only he knew this, these, from an alley with the white-hot gouge of broken glass and Rook’s blood stinging his eyes, these hands of violence and _reacting_ and he took a step back. Took a step back but John hooked his ankle around Rook’s leg and yanked his knee out from under him.

“Hello,” he purred, Rook’s hand thrown out to catch him on the wall so he didn’t _crush his psychotic body_ , leaving him braced over him. “If you wanted me in bed, you just had to ask.”

“Shut up,” Rook said automatically but John had his hands on his chest and he was right there, he was hot and clean and _right there_ and _touching_ him again, the hot-fast-loud mess of it making a noise die in his throat.

John raised his eyebrows, smile flirting with his mouth but still playing hard to get. “You’re right – this works too,” he conceded and he moved, spread his long legs so his knees were bent on either side of Rook’s hips, the way they had been (the way _they_ had been) and bracketing him, John sliding down just a bit until he was totally fucking comfortable and Rook settled there, knuckles white on the wall.

Okay.

Okay.

 _Okay_ and Rook looked at John’s mouth and he should have expected teeth, he knew better, but all he could think was that he knew what that tasted like and John wasn’t fucking harmless, not with zip ties or truces or sprawled under him on a bed, not running his hands up under Rook’s shirt to ruck up the fabric and hold onto his waist.

“Is it over, then?” John’s eyes were too dark, not creased at the corners like they usually were.

Rook’s chest seized. John stroked up Rook’s side, shirt sliding up with it until his skin prickled in the cold air and _over, over_ —

“Have we bent enough?” John asked him, a mouth full of too-sharp teeth and his lips curled over them, something like harmless but not, never.

Rook swallowed and Jacob and Joseph were talking somewhere in the county, _what if Joseph said no_ (and what if he didn’t), “I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

John’s lips were tight below those blue Seed eyes. “Have I?”

Rook opened his mouth. A few times, closed it between and shuddered down the length of him, the miles that took to travel before he rasped out, “ _yes_ ,” to John’s,

“ _finally_ ,” groaned out. He yanked Rook in with a hand on the back of his head and let out a noise like a sob when their mouths crashed together, hard enough for Rook’s lip to feel cut on John’s teeth but collapsing, shuddering – but he wasn’t the one, John had tremors moving through him, his tattooed hands weren’t steady. “You said,” he was saying, hissing into Rook’s mouth, “you said next time and then you _left_ ,” sent words mean-hurt into Rook’s mouth and then replaced them with his tongue.

“I’m here,” Rook got out and got a sigh for it, the kind of satisfied that came from the gut  before the brain and made his fingers tug at John’s shirt, scramble at the stupid fucking buttons again and John shoved at him until he rolled, until John straddled him with,

“Don’t you _dare_ rip this one—” and John took the shirt off himself, undid two buttons and just yanked it over his head, left his hair a mess and crashed back down and that was a lot, there was a lot for Rook to try and grasp, feeling muscles shifting under the skin of John’s back, his chest against his and the hardness grinding down into his hips. There was no shirt to grab, just the dry warmth of skin that felt too naked, like the tattoos covering John had been erased by the dark without texture to know them by, like they should have been raised and branded in John’s devotion. He tried to get a grip and then John reared back, undid his fly with quick efficiency that shouldn’t have made Rook’s mouth try, shoved his hand into a pocket and tossed something onto Rook’s stomach.

Rook grabbed it and, “where the hell did you get this?” he asked, jolted to lucidity by the tiny plastic lube bottle. A relic from another world, trips to the drug store that had burned down months ago, except, “we passed by a gas station,” he remembered. They’d stopped to empty the bottled water and John had levelled him with an amused look over the only remaining magazines on the rack – porn, Playboy alongside a gun catalogue and most of the other shelves bare. Rural Montana at Doomsday, a reckoning of skin mags.

John grinned, a gleam of teeth in the gloom and a quick drumbeat of fingertips on Rook’s stomach, hand splayed possessively. “Did we?”

Rook huffed, “you can’t just steal whatever you want, John,” but he was holding onto his waist, the texture of scars and warm skin and his own massive fucking hypocrisy ruining his argument.

“We could argue the point, _deputy_ Rook,” John agreed and he curved down to Rook’s sternum, bisecting Rook with the graze of his teeth, “or…” and then he tsked, slow-sly and the curve of his grin against Rook’s chest. His knee sliding up between Rook’s legs, the cant of his hips, his body speaking volumes. “Your choice,” he added, all manners, _whatever suits you_ and eyes downcast and his _mouth_ pressing a kiss, a slow drag of tongue down Rook’s stomach.

Rook had to try twice to speak – his throat clicked dry because John was getting lower, sliding down the bed – Rook twisted and caught John by surprise, dragged him under him and attacked his tailored fucking pants because he didn’t care, he didn’t care if John had to walk outside in his fucking underwear the next day, not if he had to walk outside naked and bruised and _his_ and John’s hips lurched up, ground against him, he gasped, “I would,” because Rook had muttered it, “would you like that?” A breathless laugh, a kick to help Rook drag his pants off inked, scarred legs, “want me out there marked up, well- _fucked_ for them to see _,”_ and John would, he would do it to be _good_ for him and that slid onto Rook’s face that was to a grin what a wolf was to a dog,

“Yes, _good,”_ he crooned and John made a noise that made Rook grind the heel of his palm to his dick to not embarrass himself, to not come in his pants like a fucking teenager because he was a stupid fuck still wearing pants but when he tried to pull them off the zip caught, there was too much skin in front of him for him to stay away, John’s erection drooling precome where it stood out from his hips. Rook dragged his hands down John’s chest to feel him arch up into it, slid down the trail of hair on his stomach until his fingers grazed something, cool metal and, “oh _fuck_ ,” because it was just sitting there, a small barbell through the skin above the base of John’s dick just _sitting there_ , and, “I have to,” came out helplessly before he ducked down to run his tongue over it, scraped it with his teeth when John groaned and fisted his hand in Rook’s hair to keep him there.

“Sensitive,” he managed and Rook had to stop, to press his cheek to John’s hip and try and get himself under control, he had to get under _control_ but John kept moving, little hitching motions in his hips like he couldn’t fucking help himself. Rook scrambled for the lube and coated his fingers, slid two inside him without preamble because John _liked_ it, John arched up at the stretch so hard that Rook almost lost hold, John’s hands lashing out to brace him against the wall as he keened. A high noise but John’s words coming out guttural-low and winded, _more_ but tight like a vice when Rook scissored his fingers, twisted them just to hear him whine again.

“You’re so _loud_ ,” Rook breathed, spreading his hand out on John’s stomach to force his hips back down and watching how it made his dick twitch. “Jesus, John, your men are – they’re _outside_ ,” and there it was again, with the mottled flush that spread up John’s neck to frame his dark glare.

“Really?” John choked out. “Now?”

Rook grinned – couldn’t help it and John groaned, tossed his head back (long neck, chest heaving) and bucked up against his grip. “Are you going to ask nicely?” he crooned and John snarled at him, lunged up teeth-bared but collapsed with a shout when Rook twisted his fingers again, slid them out to return with three and crooked them hard inside him.

“If you don’t fuck me _now_ I’m going to rip your _skin_ off,” John spat, half-savage all-fury, flushed red under his tattoos and hurling curses edged with a whine when Rook dragged his fingers out, shaking on his belt because _good enough_ , pants gone nowhere important before the hasty slide of lube and pressing John’s legs back, pressing into him.

John’s abuse cut off with a choked-out cry and he was tight, he was too tight and Rook was saying it, it was falling out of him with _fuck, John_ and _god_ and his whole body trembling with the effort of staying still, slick-hot. They stayed there for a long moment, air thin and thready and not enough to catch their breath, John’s eyes blown side and Rook biting into the side of his chest to try and keep himself steady, to stop the jerking motions his hips begged him for.

Rook rocked into him once when John’s grip on his shoulders, on his neck loosened a little, again when they dug back in and then again, _again_ and John’s breath started coming out in noises, helpless bitten-off things with his head tossed back, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead.

“More,” he gritted out and well, fuck,

Rook could do that

and he hitched John’s leg further up against his hip and snapped his forward, hard enough to shove John an inch up the bed. Hard-fast faster until Rook felt wild-eyed, biting too hard because kissing meant coordination, not the clumsy press of open mouths and John digging his heels into Rook’s back to urge him on, hand slammed against the wall so he could push back to meet him and soft noises turned to grunts, to short cries. No warning before John tightened blindingly around him and came with a shout, went rigid and arched up so hard Rook had to grab his hip to anchor himself inside. The hard-fast pace until Rook was dizzy with it and John’s litany of his name (of _yes_ ) broke off with, “do it,” panted against him, “I want to feel it, come _on_ ,” and Rook’s whole body seized up when he did, buried himself as far into John as he could and came like he was the one cracking open, a sharp  _snap_ in his chest as he cried out.

Rook stayed lying there while he came back to himself. John still tight around him and aftershocks trailing down his legs, John’s limbs too tight around him for him to move. He had to be crushing John – too big, too much –John’s quickshort breaths not deep enough, not when it felt like Rook couldn’t get enough air (heart pounding) in the small room. He pulled out and John made a wounded noise, grabbed at him and the slick noise made his cock twitch again, made him hiss and want to press his fingers back in and feel it, make a fucking mess of him all over again until John was writhing on his fingers again, until he could put his mouth back on that piercing and—

Rook fished around and dragged the blanket up, dug his palm into the stitches on his stomach that were already red-flared and aching from the exertion to ground himself. It clawed at his insides, the anaesthetic of sex and adrenaline and John’s sweat-slick skin not numbing it anymore, more what he needed than he wanted to say. He managed to shift John enough to pull him under the blanket and John immediately wound around him again. It felt dark and warm the way not all rooms did, like some darkness was thicker, more syrupy than others and Rook closed his eyes only to find John idly playing with his ear of all things when he opened them again, fingers tracing the shell of it. Ticklish and too much for his prickling skin and John’s chest shook with a laugh when Rook turned his head to the side, buried his face in John’s shoulder instead.

“If I’d known it would take the end of the world,” John murmured, the slur of sleep taking him down already, drifting out of Rook’s hands even pressed as tightly as they were, “I’d have bought more of the fucking water,” and his lips curved when Rook huffed a laugh into the pillow, into John’s forehead.

“Don’t fall asleep.” Rook waved a tired arm to indicate the mess - the bed, John’s stomach, the slick down his thighs, but John grabbed his arm and folded it under his head, rested on Rook’s bicep and closed his eyes.

“Tomorrow,” he said drowsily, sprawled over him, wound around so tightly Rook’s inhales were weighed down by his body, and then he fell asleep. Just like that, breaths even and slow as he went where Rook couldn’t follow. To Jacob and Joseph, Rook remembered, and when he fell asleep

he saw no one at all.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot tell you how many chapters almost ended with these two fucking and yet, this was so difficult. What contrary fucks. Also, use protection - Rook is a protagonist in murder central who is too hard up to care, no one should be like him.
> 
> Going popular alternative with this chapter title, from It Will Come Back by Hozier. That's right, I own a radio (no I don't)


	29. you've got problems now, my friend

 

 

Rook didn’t sleep well. Not often, or easily, and it was a surprise to be woken up by someone else. John slept heavy-limbed, so still he barely breathed and tangled up with Rook until Rook could feel his heartbeat against his shoulder, until Rook woke when John did because he felt his sharp inhale, the quick twitch of his fingers just before he opened his eyes.

Rook turned until his cheek was against the pillow, looked at John sleep-warm and creased at the eyes. Pale light was coming in through the windows and it could almost have been a normal morning, waking in a bed short enough that Rook had to bend at the knees – it was almost a normal thing, John’s blue eyes hazy and waking just inches away. “John.” Rook’s voice was rough, sleep still sifting through it.

John was somewhere else. Close enough for Rook to feel him breathe but far away, absent – Rook waited, but when John focused, it wasn’t on him. A split-second of blankness before John lurched up and off the bed. “Get up,” he said, quickly reaching for his clothes, yanking them on while Rook sat up behind him.

“What’s going on?”

John was doing up buttons already and Rook watched bruises vanish under clothes, swung his legs over the side of the bed. John tossed his shirt and pants at him in a bundle. Rook tugged them on stiffly – sore, the stitches across his gut and shoulder too-tight with red-sore-stretch. John was still talking, “they’re moving,” pulling himself back into the Herald from the warm tangle of limbs and breath and John, gone while he slept even wrapped around Rook, gone so fucking fast.

Rook reached out and touched the skin below the bruise on his neck, the redness there. “John. Stop for a second.”

John turned and yanked Rook’s collar more square on his neck. “They’re approaching the island again, Jacob’s going on the attack.”

“Attack?” Rook echoed. “John, will you – John! “ He took his arm before he could turn. “What did Joseph say? The Collapse, Fall’s End?”

John’s moves were jerky, stop-motion flinches and voice tight. He gave him a look as he yanked his coat on, A Look, the kind of narrow-vicious that he hadn’t seen since the first video, since John had stood behind Joseph in handcuffs. “He didn’t.” He raised his voice, slammed the door to the living room open. “A map, _someone_ get me a map _now_!”

Rook scrambled after him, dragging on his boots. “What the hell does that mean?” He had to dodge the front door – a peggie pushed it open onto him when they came in, rushing to meet John’s demands.

“Joseph didn’t sleep. He didn’t say no, but he didn’t say yes, either.” John snapped his fingers, pointed and a map was on the table in the next second, someone had given him a marker and he was marking spots, slashing each bridge around the island with a jagged _x_ , more down the Henbane. “Jacob has two dozen men and a few of the more manageable Judges,” John said quickly, circles on the island. “Their radios stopped working when he got near the island. After he reached Joseph, they blew the bridge here,” branding the road to the Whitetails, to where Jacob had torn soldiers apart from the inside.

Rook looked at the map, then back at John. “… This is what Jacob told you? He couldn’t get Joseph to take a fucking _nap_ but he keeps a whole map in his mind?”

What had Joseph said? He hadn’t.

Fucking typical.

John didn’t bother with his question. “Jacob thinks they won’t risk crossing the river after the rain. He’s found barricades at these points, he thinks maybe a dozen at the lowest here, but more up North,” gesturing to the marks he’d made. No faces in dreams but apparently Jacob could hold the county in his head like Joseph held it in his hand, a map from another man’s mind to a plywood kitchen table.

Rook studied it reluctantly. The choke points he would have taken out and the black marker scrawled over it, the ruined bridge. “They’re cut off,” he observed. “They’re going to fence them in and then burn the whole island.”

“Jacob will never let that happen,” John replied sharply, eyes dark like a lie (like doubt). “He won’t let them trap him. Never.’

Wouldn’t have, Rook corrected mentally. Not for anyone but Joseph ( _do you think I’m afraid to die_ on shortwave) who was his brother, his soulmate, the centre of the Seeds’ whole fucking universe. Jacob red-bled and ready to die for something, just too vicious to go down quietly and the thing was that Rook knew that was what the soldiers were planning because Rook would have done the same. Waited for the rain-glutted river to rise too high, too fast to cross and then blown the bridges, isolating them as best he could before he set the whole fucking place on fire, too fast for Jacob’s long reach to ruin it all.

Rook would have done the same, once. Before he understood that Jacob’s reach was wide, but Joseph’s was worse (inside them already) and they were going to burn them. They were going to seal them off and turn them to ashes, John and Jacob and that house on the hill, plain white walls and rooms that locked from the outside, the riverbank he’d bled on and the things that were theirs, the things that were

_his_

and, “I can break that line,” Rook found himself saying, jabbing a finger at the map, at the most southern bridge where John had least marked it. “Here. That’ll open them up to reinforcement from the Henbane, if you can get any of Faith’s people, or you if you have the people to spare.” John shook his head. Too fast, a knee-jerk- _no_ that Rook talked over. “Their jamming equipment has to be short-range. They have to know the county’s relying on shortwave communication and they wouldn’t want to alert the whole cult that an attack was happening. If I can get to the equipment, we can organise the pushback. But even if I can’t, we can get Jacob and Joseph off the island.”

John hissed, grip on the table leaving hands white-knuckled. “No. No, we have to think of something else, there’s too many of them. These aren’t faithful wandering around the woods that you can pick off. We have to be smart about this.”

Rook grimaced. “If we take your men they’ll see us coming and close ranks, maybe even call reinforcements.” He grabbed him by the arm. “They’ll never see me coming. I can do this, John.”

“Jacob and Joseph are both there, they can handle this,” John snapped. He yanked his arm free. “It’s not like we were preparing for the _end of the world_ , Rook.”

“But not one like _this_.” Rook couldn’t wage war on the scale Jacob did, burn minds and steal souls like John or Faith but fuck – a gun and a radio and he could burn the county down, sift the haystack ashes for the needle. It would be easier without John, without Jacob and the three minds working together to stop him, colluding every night while he dreamed he couldn’t hear them.

John turned on him fast (the whiplash of a chair flying) like a burst of violence and just looked at him. Furious and spiralling out under his skin, ready to erupt in sharp words, in armed cultists spilling over the landscape with his words carved into them,  teetering on the edge (feet slipping) and

terrified.

Not Joseph, Rook thought. John couldn’t lose Joseph. 

“John, please,” he said.

_Please, I can do this. Please,_

on his back on the riverbank,

_please,_

mouth full of blood,

please. “I can do this,” Rook repeated. “Trust me.” John let out a long breath. Rook pushed his luck, always had. “If you sort out a defence with Fall’s End, if you can work with them, we can get out of this together. All of us.”

John snorted. “Oh, that won’t be a problem,” he said darkly. “Choice is a luxury they can no longer afford.”

Rook froze. “What?”

For the first time he registered the noise, the voices of the peggies outside. Not five, not ten. More. John uncapped the marker, and this time he aimed for the valley.

 

 

 

Rook beat John outside. He ran. Threw the door open and pushed past peggies pulling guns from trucks, shoved through until he reached the edge of them. Rook lifted his arm to shade his eyes and squinted – Fall’s End stood distant in the early morning fog, still enough to unwind the clench in his chest, the knot there shaped like Mary May, like Hudson’s red eyes. Mary May with the pills she needed but had given him instead. Hudson, who sucked at crosswords and texted like a teenage girl with anger problems, who was helpless and _sick_.

“Rook!” John caught up, long strides and dramatic coat. “If you’d ever _listen_ , I could tell you that they’re not _here_ yet.” He grabbed Rook’s elbow to turn him. “The valley? Is _mine_. They’ll never get this far.”

Air left Rook – almost a scoff, half a choke. “They’re coming for them,” and they had a fucking plan but he they were his people (they were _his_ ) and John stepped quickly, blocked his way when he tried to go around, to where his gun sat inside. “I have to be here, they’ll need me—”

“No, we need you!” John lifted a hand to ward him back, red-white heat coiling in his posture and across his face. “Me and my men will take care of this, but you have to go where you’ll actually be _useful_ ,” not stepping back when Rook moved forward, always moving forward because he didn’t _get_ pushed back, he wasn’t on a scale of retreat but then, “no, _no_ , it’s your turn – do you trust me?” John demanded, the Herald and John and a knife (and bare skin) and the bluest fucking eyes, wild, and Rook had to stop. “Rook, _trust_ me,” parroting his words back to him

and Rook couldn’t catch his breath (Fall’s End just a target on a map and _X_ marked on the horizon)

and it was John pushing the air out of him, taking it for himself because that’s what he was, he was _selfish_ and he’d told Rook that, he’d warned him but Rook hadn’t understood what he was giving up until,

“okay,”

ground out of him, scraping over the broken edges in his chest to make John smile, narrow and bloody and glow-blinding, reaching up to grab him by the back of the neck.

“ _Thank you_ ,” John breathed, eyes too bright and he hauled him in to kiss him once, hard enough that Rook felt the edge of teeth, body-memory and the taste of blood before John pulled back. “I can deserve it,” John told him, fever-bright and edged. “I _promise_ ,” and Rook saw it for a second, how that fervour made a light in him that the peggies couldn’t resist, the sort broken moths flocked to and all of it devotion, really, Rook the focus of it for a dizzying beat before John pushed him back. Rook caught himself before he could stumble, took the keys John shoved towards him.

“We don’t have much time.”

Rook looked down, turned the keys in his hand. “What’s it for,” he asked warily, and John grinned mean, and far too wide.

 

 

 

Sheriff Whitehorse liked to call motorcycles _donorcycles_ (eyes creased in disapproval, trying nicotine gum the fiftieth time on road patrol) and shook his head each time he saw one.

A minute in, wind whistling past his helmet and hands almost frozen to the handles, Rook understood why. It handled like a jackrabbit to the turtle that was a truck, hypersensitive to every shift because Rook was too fucking _big_ for motorcycles, but that was all John’s men had to spare on hand. The long, sprawling turns out of the valley felt precarious every time he leaned into them, like the road was moving faster under the thin wheels that they were moving and Rook hated it, he _hated_ motorcycles. Almost enough to go skidding off the road when the bridged loomed out after a blind turn and he had to slow, to kill the engine before he got close enough for them to hear it.

The brakes squealed, the tyres almost skidded with how fast Rook braked. The motorcycle thrummed, the high guttering noise of a cheap ride that made his back teeth vibrate. He sat back and pushed the visor of his helmet back, the radio on his hip flaring with another burst of static.

Still too far away to close quickly on foot – a problem he wouldn’t have _had_ in a car – and Rook drew his pistol from habit to close the distance through the trees. The underbrush splintered everywhere he walked, almost frozen solid. Soaked and then snowed in, winter breaking over Hope County like a fucking wave.

At least the trees were mostly evergreens – without foliage he’d have been too visible to the helicopters passing sporadically overhead, the _whump-whump_ of rotor-blades that could have been the cult, could have been the soldiers.

Helicopters were a pain in the ass, and Rook kept low all the way to the rise above the bridge, settled into the winter-stripped branches of some bushes to pull out his binoculars.

The camp sat dark and clumped at the mouth of the bridge, like a tumour. The perimeter for the soldiers was tight, contained. They’d set up temporary barricades at each side but they were lighter by the road, expecting resistance from Joseph (from _Jacob_ ) rather than the valley, distracted as it would be with men moving in. Well-geared with floodlights, dark camouflage – probably waiting for nightfall, men who saw the water stir and thought _fish_ instead of crocodile.

Rook sighed through his nose. A meal clustered at every exit, hoping to starve them. Rook was hungrier than most but there was no time for guerrilla warfare. He scanned them slowly while the light was still good and he saw coordination, he saw discipline, he saw maybe twenty men at most, fifteen at least.

He saw fuel tanks, and he put the binoculars away.

 

 

-

 

 

The truck was already on fire when it slammed through the barricade. Men scattered to get out of its path, small fish from a thrown stone and it glanced the fuel tank in its crashing route, fishtailed into the van next to it with a crunch and shattering glass. There was a split-second before the fire caught and the explosion shook the ground, and Rook darted in by the reeds on the other side of their encampment while men were screaming, while the noise of it was still ringing.

It would have been easier with Peaches. He had no cover when he reached the first man alone, gun drawn but held low while he hovered by a tent and then on the ground as Rook dragged him into the grass and stuck the knife in. He kept low while blood seeped into the frozen ground and the soldiers were already advancing on the fire with foam and scrambling to mounted machine guns, reorganising to protect themselves where their barricade had been too thin.

It would have been easier with Peaches, but the tents were close together and Rook could be sneaky too, so he crouched to get to the can nearest the tent with comms equipment in it, tried to stay out of sight as he pulled remote explosives out and tried to keep their keys straight in his mind for about four seconds before he admitted he was going to just set the fuckers all off at once.

It would have been easier but there was no Peaches, there was no Boomer. There was no one coming to help him and the only thing Rook had that could move and take and _kill_ was fire, so he was already moving to his next target when he thumbed the switch and sent the fucking parking lot to hell. He tripped over a body bag when he had to lunge into a tent to avoid being seen and landed heavily on another one, the crinkle of the bag somehow worse with the dead-heavy limbs under his knees and elbows. Men raced past too fast and he could hear a chopper circling back around, people barking orders and gunfire. Firing at nothing but shadows because that was what people did when they were frightened, they took tools and used them (uselessly) and Rook’s heart was going too fast for his body to keep up, almost shaking him with the reverb. He slunk around the back of a weapons crate, the straw spilling out and nothing useful left in it, creeping up on a man aiming his gun at the trees in a wide scan.

“And she called his name Moses,” spilled out static-sharp from his radio and Rook scrambled for it but the man by the barricade had already turned. He saw Rook in the wide-goddamn-open and opened his mouth before Rook tackled him to the ground. His gun went off but the shots went wide while Dutch, fucking _Dutch_ declared, too stilted by half in his quotation, “and she said, because I drew him out of the water,” and Rook took the butt of his gun and cracked it into the man’s temple, felt the crunch of bone and the man go limp under him.

“What the fuck, Dutch?” he hissed, jerking the volume down to zero because hey, he must have found that fucking jammer after all and a glint of metal was all the warning he had before he had to hurl himself rough into the gravel behind the crates again, bullets punching the ground where he’d been. Rook fished for a grenade and yanked the pin, held it for three before he tossed it and heard the yell, felt the shock-flash _-bang_ and was already out from cover again, sprinting a beeline for the man still reeling next to a mounted machine gun that Rook couldn’t afford to let him touch.

How many left, how many _left_ when Rook’s rifle almost cut him in half, when a bullet grazed his side before he returned fire, before the bone-rattle of gunfire took his attacker down and Rook was already sprinting away. The smoke was rising high but the stink of it had started to fall through the camp, the fire was roaring instead of crackling. It was climbing up through the camp when Rook tried to turn when he heard voices ahead – the heat of it scorched his face, his arm when he lifted it to shield his eyes.

He’d have to go forward. He’d have to go through the men ahead and just hope to god the sound of gunfire didn’t bring the rest swarming down on him, so Rook pressed the stock against his shoulder, lifted his gun and darted clear of the burning tent,

which was when the bear arrived.

There was a burst of a scream before the brown shape crashed through the barricade, splinters showered out before it hit a man with the force of a truck. It sounded like a fucking chainsaw and it barrelled through the soldiers like they were nothing, bodies giving like tissue paper under claws, under paws the size of a motorcycle helmet. It absorbed a bullet without flinching and its jaws – how big were its fucking _teeth_ – closed around a man’s entire midriff, crunching down with another muffled noise. It lifted its head to look at Rook, blood dripping from its teeth and eyes shining button-black and a shape moved behind it and Rook lifted his gun without thinking. A bear as big as a fucking minivan and Rook couldn’t help it, he panicked when a soldier crouching by the remaining vans came at it with a shotgun and the spray of pellets made the bear roar, to turn on the woman more annoyed than anything, but Rook was already past it, was already on her before she could take aim again and then she never would. He yanked the shotgun out of her limp hands and slung his rifle back, panting heavily.

There was a snuffling, grinding noise from behind him.

Rook froze.

In his peripheral vision, the bear lumbered forward a few steps. He flinched when it reared up onto two legs beside him and just like that went from _bear_ to _Bear_ while Rook held his breath – it tottered a step closer with head stuck out to sniff around Rook’s face, as tall as he was because Rook was _literally bear-sized_ but had never felt so small, like his bones were so close to the surface. It smelt powerfully musky and its fur was long and surprisingly rough when it brushed against the side of his face, against the skin bared where his shirt had burned away over his shoulder.

After a long, long moment, the bear thudded back down to four feet, weight shaking the ground on impact. It grumbled at him, shoving a head as big as a car engine against his stomach, snuffling hard.

It felt like he should stick his hands up. Like he was at gunpoint, like cold steel was at the back of his head but the bear just investigated his shirtfront in the middle of a camp in flames and made a whuffling noise. The feel of its breath on his stomach made the muscle there clench in primal fear, and then the bear made one of its grumbling noises again and turned, shoving past Rook’s legs easily and it was wearing a _collar_ , but all Rook could think was a string of impressions and flashes, like muscles unlocking had made his blood run to water.

Rook swallowed, and his hands were shaking as he reloaded the shotgun, heard the bear roar again and its feet thud in another rampage.

 

How many left,

how many to go?

 

It got easier when he got to the next mounted machine gun but then, it had never been hard. It had been dangerous and tiring and fracturing, chipping away deep-down where Rook was red-warm and soft (where hurting lived) but it hadn’t been hard to turn a gun on people who had turned theirs on him first, because Rook had had to decide he wanted to live when life hadn’t decided well enough for him, and just more of them to get through wasn’t going to change that. The fresh burn to his leg wasn’t going to change that, another bullet graze and a knife stuck through his hand and the fucking Seeds trapped like rats while Rook – Rook and a _bear_ – burned and shot his way through another camp wasn’t going to change that.

The camp was still in flames by the time Rook sagged, throat bruised to hell from grappling with a man who’d been torn off him by a bear – a fucking _bear_ – and the gunfire finally over, the struts and studs of him groaning and straining. The fire had settled to crackling again, bright flames casting everything dull around them and pillars of smoke steadily streaming up. Rook sank down into a crouch by one of the unmarked vans, parked close enough to the water that it would have bogged when the stupid fucks tried to leave, and he tried to catch his breath while the bear tore off a man’s pockets for who knew what.

That was what Rook had. He had guns and fire and a motherfucking _bear_ and no time to sit down, really – just a minute. A minute before he had to push through, before soldiers came to reinforce the line and retake the barricades. He had to get to Jacob, who wasn’t afraid to die. To Joseph, who could have said something and hadn’t, whose voice Rook had taken weeks to be ready to listen to again.

He’d taken out the jammers, though.

Rook lifted the radio. His lungs burned from the cold air and there was pain in his shoulder, shoddy stitches strained to capacity (insides leaking out) and fucking _Dutch_ had almost gotten him killed with bible verse in the middle of a firefight, when Dutch was as militant an atheist as he was everything else.

“Dutch?” he asked. “What the fuck was that all about? Are you there?”

There was no response.

“Can anyone hear me?”

Nothing.

Rook looked at the bear. It looked back at him and thudded down to sit on its haunches, its arms resting over its stomach. It was curious, eyes too steady and implacable, as close to alien as anything he’d seen even set in its furry, broad face.

Big, furry, and dragging men off him in the middle of a fight. God-fucking-damnit.

Rook sighed. “Hey buddy,” he drew out cautiously, fishing for the jerky he’d squirrelled away in his pocket and barely shuddering at the sudden, predatory gleam in its eyes when he held it out. “How do you feel about cults?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, I could update reasonably often like I have been, or I could be massively distracted writing weird one-shot versions of the brothers' perspectives from fucking birth to story onset, get super sidetracked writing Jacob's, and then realise it's been weeks and that my hanging plant has taken over my bookcase. Sure. we all got options. Anyway, back to it.
> 
> (Rook has had Cheeseburger for two minutes now and if anything happened to him, he would kill everyone in Hope County and then himself)
> 
> Chapter title from You Can Run by Adam Jones.


	30. so goddamn this boiling space

The island made a trespasser of Rook. It was silent and still, dead air between trees ahead. Any animals nearby had been driven away by the noise, the explosions, and after months of living outdoors, the quiet hung wrong in Rook’s ears. It hung silent and still in him too, between bodies burning behind him and where they lay in his head, stacked high.

Bear was a loud breather. That was something.

It was nothing concrete, what made him stop. No explosion, no gunshots, but the air changed and Rook slowed and Bear put its ears forward, mouth drooping open like it could taste it. Maybe it could. Rook didn’t know a fucking thing about bears. He held his rifle close and came to a stop near the end of the bridge, stood there until his peripheral vision caught the red blink of a warning high on the suspension cables above. He stopped and squinted, hand held out to stop Bear in its tracks.

The light blinked slowly. He slung his gun onto his back.

Explosives. Rook knelt where he stood, hands raised empty and open and Bear snuffling at him in curiosity before it settled back on its haunches, and look at that – it was a male bear. A laser sight settled, quivering, on Rook’s chest.

Fucking hell.

The wait was made of _did you see_ and _giant_ , of _sinner_ through cupped hands in hushed voices and the burning camp behind him, until one peggie emerged from bushes further down by the road, one hand on a pistol and the other twitching on a detonator at his side. “Stop, or I’ll blow you sky-high!”

Rook’s knees hurt where they rooted him to the asphalt and down, down through steel to dynamite. The cold fucking road on already sore legs and as frozen as he could get, hell – exploding was one option.

He waited.

The sound of the peggie’s footsteps was irregular as he approached. Like someone humming just out of time, pace halt _drag_ in hesitation and the ruined rhythm setting Rook’s teeth on edge.

One-two       three  four             five _six_

and then the peggie was in front of him. The beard made him look older than he was, but still not old. A peggie barely drinking age with blood dried on the knife at his side. He cleared his throat. “Don’t move.”

Rook wasn’t old either but he felt it, carbon-date-decrepit in his sigh. “I want to speak to Jacob.”

The man’s face curdled, rancid behind his teeth. “That’s Herald Jacob to your kind, _sinner_ ,” with a twitch of his trigger finger on a gun he was barely legal to buy.

 _Herald_ Jacob to him – Rook looked at the peggie and he didn’t need to kill any more people that day but the peggie stood there and took _Jacob_ and pushed him back to arm’s length with _Herald_ , shoved him back because they got to decide if they took him to Jacob, wouldn’t even fucking consider taking him to Joseph – the Father _their_ Father, and Rook’s bones shifted under his skin, he had never been so far away and he

looked at the dried-blood man from that distance, from arm’s length, and the peggie flinched as more came out of the trees to join them. Five, six – the laser point on his chest never moving, making at least seven.

“I’ve made an escape route,” he said instead of repeating himself, instead of choking on _Herald_ , “but I made a lot of noise, I made a big fucking mess and they’re gonna be on you fast,” and he had to stay down (stay _down_ ) and let them surround him, had to let them leave his peripheral vision to stand where he couldn’t see, where knowing became thinking he knew what they were doing, where they made his skin feel soft and thin.

One breath in. One breath out.

A female peggie took centre in front of him. She was tall, almost six feet of red-black fanatic and Bitten with a goddamn crossbow. “Who are you?” she demanded, words half-slurred from a jaw clenched so tight her lips barely moved.

Rook stayed bland. Unassuming. As tall as her fucking chest, even kneeling, a bear lurching noisily through the nearby shrubs. “John Seed sent me to break the line. To make an escape route for your _faithful_ here.”

A beat.

“For us,” he corrected. For the hunter in front of him with her skipping-stone eyes, flat and glimmerless. “But it won’t last long. I give it thirty minutes, maybe less if they don’t hit trouble on the river.”

She looked past him, a lift of her chin and they didn’t have time, they didn’t have _time_ to stand there and decide whether or not they were going to listen, didn’t they have fucking _eyes_ —

Rook’s jaw hurt. He was used to grinding his teeth. “I took out the scrambler, radio your _boss_ ,” and he should have seen it coming but his back shot stiff all the way down his spine when she ignored him.

One breath, two.

The hunter spoke. “Try the radio. If you can’t raise them, send Jensen on a run to base. We don’t have long before the drop.” She jerked her crossbow at where Bear had come sniffing out of the undergrowth. “Tell your pet to sit. Stay. Whatever it fucking does.”

Rook shrugged. “He’s not mine,” except how Bear kept _looking_ at Rook from outside their ring, looking at him side-on and back every few seconds, like Bear was making sure he was still there, his black eyes concerned amongst the fuzz and shiny, almost like a child’s toy bear, wearing a pink collar and used to humans but all alone and making conversational noise and grunts in the silence like he wanted to talk and _fucking_ hell, the hunter, the whites of her eyes when Bear huffed. The way the man next to her shifted and, “if it moves, shoot it,” made his breath short.

Bear lifted his head, mouth drooping open and behind him, Rook heard, “we read you, Forward, this is Base. What is your status, over,” in that fucking radio crackle. Bear swung his head and the hunter lifted her bow and, “don’t!” Rook shouted before Bear’s casual push past sent him to the road side-first, the sting of asphalt a hot line down his side.

It wasn’t a blow. It was a swat. Idle and careless but a swat from a fucking grizzly bear and the hunter crumpled like a tissue, the front of her caved in with just a wet ripping sound and an arrow sent wide. Rook lashed out and yanked an automatic away from its owner, hit the ground again when Bear lunged (an open maw of hotwet _teeth_ ) and just barrelled right through him. He had a face full of fur for a second, blood and musk and _heavy_ before he shoved himself free, and he

fired

except he hadn’t fired an automatic at so close a target before and he wasn’t ready for the kick, how it slammed into his chest and then the peggie’s,

how the bullets just cut him in half. Rook knew blood didn’t ooze but sprayed and it slashed him across the face with wet heat as Bear roared, as something crunched and cried and then did nothing at all.

They’d stood around him in a circle, he’d let them circle him and the blood was fucking everywhere because a bear was a short-range weapon. Rook was still wiping blood out of his eyes when it all went silent and it burned him, blood hot from someone else’s body on his windchilled face as he groped blindly. The peggie holding the radio must have been further off, hadn’t just been savaged to pieces right away. A red-haired woman lying on her side, twitching – the radio she had been using was doused in blood and hissing static, channel shot to max where her thumb had jerked the dial and useless, _useless_ –

Rook seized the woman by her vest. Her eyes were unfocused. “What channel?!” Rook demanded (her head lolled limp) and, “what radio channel were you using, what did she mean by the _drop_?!” The peggie kept trying to breathe in but slickpink flesh gaped open under his grip, washed red where her guts were out in the air and spilling out, out in the air and her insides outside and _shifting_ because she was trying to breathe in, didn’t know it was over.

Pink froth bubbled out of her mouth, and then it didn’t.

Thump, thump, his heart in his fucking ears. He fumbled with the radio, fingers jittery with (intestines at his feet) adrenaline, the tinnitus-high ring in his ears from the automatic as he scanned as quickly as he could. “This is Rook, this is deputy Rook down by the south bridge – the bridge is clear, I repeat, the bridge is _clear_ ,” Jacob and Joseph and too far in so little time. The road ahead turned from asphalt to dirt and just another problem when there were Whitetails walking around on only most of their legs, when even Rook couldn’t shrug off a landmine. “Do you read me – _fuck_ , does anybody read me–”

“ _—she called his name Moses_ —”

Rook didn’t throw the radio, but the plastic squeaked in his grip, he repeated. “The south bridge is clear, but reinforcements will be incoming, can anyone hear me?” and it was clawing up in him, reading the script gouged along his ribs of _can you hear me can you hear me say something say_

 

and then

 

“ _I hear you, brothers_ ,” Faith Seed replied.

Rook’s guts turned to water.

“ _Don’t be afraid – we are **here**_.” A pause and sigh, sweet from Faith Seed’s white-noise-lungs, the shy-lovely of her concern and the growing noise above him ( _don’t **tell** me they’ve got fucking air support_ )

 

and then

 

“ _deputy_ ,” Faith Seed said. “ _Run_.”

 

 

-

 

A split second to process and Rook was already racing down the road, boots loud on broken asphalt and Bear’s thundering sprint keeping pace easy beside him. The air split with the nasal whine of the plane overhead, already too close because where the fuck _else_ could something be _dropped_ from around there, so far from the mountains and Rook, stupid enough to not think of it but smart enough to know there wasn’t just Joseph’s house on the island, that another family had been run out months ago.

Rook, who expected to be shot. He expected the large-calibre rounds to tear through him, pepper the ground on the other side like he wasn’t there at all except for the viscera left sprayed behind (fucking cut in half), and he didn’t think he’d make it when he swerved off the road and the Vasquez house came into view – he was just another body, not a peggie (not _alike_ ), jumping instead of taking the steps down from the driveway. But he did, rolling when he hit the earth but still hitting hard enough to send pain shooting up his legs, through his knees, coming to a stop on his back and already pushing himself up when he saw the plane flying out of easy view, not one of John’s Chosen; one of the old crop-dusters trailing something that shimmered and made Rook stop dead.

He stared at the glow descending from a great height just that little too fast because what the fuck, what the _fuck_ was Faith even doing there and why hadn’t John said, why hadn’t he been told?

Green. Falling and drifting and spiralling down in clouds, Rook felt the red _hurt_ Bliss hurtling towards him, and no, he thought; he hadn’t been. John hadn’t told him because he hadn’t known. Wouldn’t have sent Rook, who was big and strong and _Bitten_ and Rook yanked the broken door open, dragged the hallway endtable to keep it shut when Bear followed. He raced through, shutting windows and thank _fuck_ the Vasquez couple had had the sense to take the money, hadn’t had their doors and windows shot out and painted over ( _Sinner_ ) but they had a fireplace that Rook had to struggle with, a flue he didn’t understand how to use.

He ended up sooty, blackened down his arms and breath loud, so loud when the noise from outside was muffled properly and he had to secure a single room. He nodded to himself, over and over and gasping and he had to pick one to hole up in, couldn’t rely on the house being airtight. He paced back and forth – he had to move, he just wasn’t sure _where_ yet – and looked at Bear, the only thing there that could look back.

“Bathroom,” he told Bear but no, not the bathroom; deliberate ventilation, a mirror to break and shards to grab when—

_kill me kill me please Jacob **do it**_

No, not the bathroom. Rook shook his head; green was tinting the world outside, settling like snow. He swallowed. “Kitchen,” and that was worse, “living room,” where most accidents happen in a home, fucking Office of Statistics, so, “bedroom,” Rook snapped, long steps taking him to-through the hallway, Bear trailing behind. He yanked towels from the hallway cupboard on the way and wet them in the bathroom sink, ripped the sheets off the double bed and started rolling them, tearing off strips to stuff it into the cracks and lines where air whistled through the closed door, the windows.

Matthew Vasquez smiled at him from a photo on top of the dresser. Rook tipped it off, dragged the whole fucking thing in front of the door, a substitute for the broken handle.

The last whistle cut off.

It left the room quiet.

Rook stepped back from the door, breathing hard. Took another step just to have the space to think and because it took him to the centre of the room, as far from both the door and window as he could.

He ran a hand over his face, over his mouth. Felt the tremor in it – how his fingers still held the shape of the Bliss, the way they’d splintered and scrabbled, how his nails had torn against the ground (against Jacob) and he flinched to feel one catch his jaw.

Faith. Faith and her Angels and her Bliss, always the fucking _Bliss_. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out the radio again, jerked back at Bear’s nose against his knee. A reflex that made Bear’s ears prick forward and Rook’s gut lurch, his rubbed-raw hindbrain screaming _TEETH_ and flashing someone’s intestines down his wrists, how they’d been slippery and warm.

Bear crooned at him and sat, gracelessly. Rook let out a breath and gave its face a cautious scratch, felt the hot-wet huff against his hand.

One breath, two.

The green drifting down outside was milky, flecked like static through the window. The island filling with Faith’s airwave-breaths, the way she trailed it wherever she went. Immune to it like all the Faiths, Bitten and immune and beautiful and so much for _down the fucking river_ , goddamn. Faith wasn’t a soldier. She didn’t fight people to hurt them and Rook had no idea what to do with that, no idea how to predict what she’d done because it was playing chess against someone who thought it was checkers. No idea how wide an area she’d covered in that goddamn poison because her supply was endless, Rook skirted past green barrels every day, everywhere, but hopefully she’d at least aimed at the northern camp. Done something useful.

Rook let his arms rest against his knees, let his head hang, and he closed his eyes.

 _Sitrep, son_.

He’d broken the line to let Joseph and Jacob out. Two Heralds, and he’d ended up trapped with three of them outside. Faith, immune. Joseph, immune. Jacob, who’d give Tylenol a headache and Rook, without a gas mask. Eli had rocked up to more than one town hall meeting to show people how to make one with a plastic bottle, dust mask and a shitload of tape but a glance out the window made Rook break into a sweat, feel the rips in his clothes where toxic air could brush against his skin.

He hissed.

Fuck the bliss.

Rook closed his eyes again, thoughts falling back into line. Jarred out of it against when the radio came to life between his hands.

“ _All units_.”

He knew that voice. Rook’s laugh was a crackling thing.

“ _The south is confirmed clear. Rearguard, advance north. Base and forward teams, take the southern bridge. Move or die,_ ” Jacob said. Rough and short and more before Rook could press the button to speak. “ _Faith, meet us by the bridge. Concentrate your planes north.”_

“ _I’ll see you soon, Jacob._ ” Rachel had been excitable where Faith was content; Joseph’s certainty must have leaked through, taken the surprise out of it all. “ _I’ll be waiting for you_.”

The noise cut out. Bear’s enormous exhale filled the room, then settled silent in the corners. The island had made a trespasser of Rook and it weighed in again, how eavesdropping was a weapon and a radio just a window into someone else’s plans, the ones not made between Seed heads in the middle of the night where no one could follow – the one thing Rook could get his hands on and he had to say something but his hands felt weak with relief, where the adrenaline made him hollow; his fingers flexed uselessly on the button because Faith knew what to do but Rook didn’t, hadn’t known those plans. Wasn’t part of that communication and ( _don’t worry_ in a kitchen turned _you won’t give me that either_ and) that fool, Rook opening his mouth and making himself that fool again and again and again and

“ _Oh, one more thing_ ,” Jacob threw in, threw away so casually, “ _deputy. You’re late._ ”

Rook licked his lips. Copper-tasting and dry. He lifted the radio again. “Hey Jacob,” he said, and his voice didn’t shake. “Go fuck yourself.” He looked down at Bear, at where its enormous sides moved with each calm breath. Up, down.

One breath, two.

He pressed the button again. “Bring an extra gas mask. Extra large.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year. 
> 
> Chapter title from Spanish Sahara as covered by City Calm Down. I have no idea what the original sounds like.


	31. a spark in your centre that's piercing me in

The shaking stopped after a while. Bear didn’t mind Rook’s slow slide to the floor beside him – he just leaned until his weight pressed down on Rook’s leg. He’d gasped himself breathless and his head swam then started to pound, the familiar thick-throbbing sinking up from the brainstem.

Bear sighed heavily. Rook’s leg was numb by the time he heard a crash.

Right. He’d blocked the door. It was a pain in the ass getting through a barrier even half-done. Sober to the marrow, the thought still tugged at the corner of his mouth – _good_.

The bliss drifted down outside.

It took longer than he expected. A basic sweep (police academy, full marks) put the bedroom as four of five stops, and the door hit the dresser sharply.

“Gas mask?” Rook called. The whites of Bear’s eyes showed as he rolled them back to look at Rook. No one answered, but the door rattled again. Heavier, a _slam_ and a jump of the dresser. Rook stood and put a hand on his sidearm as it went again, again, splintered and gave.

A bloodied Angel staggered back from the doorframe, moaning in pain. Their shoulder was bleeding, hanging at the wrong angle and the door had dented inwards at chest height when it gave, bludgeoned down with their whole bliss-stained body. Another staggered into view, red trailing down their cheeks. Rook unclipped his holster but they stood there, milled in front of him.

One had masks looped around their neck. A jumble of plastic and black fasteners. Rook reached for them slowly but the woman didn’t react, didn’t flinch as Bear investigated her red-raw hands where the nails were ripped out.

He examined the mask for a long moment. There was blood dried into a seam but it was extra-large, just like he’d asked for.

“Buddy,” Rook said to Bear, Angel hovering-aching in his peripheral vision, “you are gonna hate this.”

 

 

He did.

 

 

-

 

 

The gas mask gave Rook blinders, flat-framed everything through plastic overwarm and tight on his face. His head was pounding before they hit the road, hot-hurt thudding down his neck and up his skull. Bliss shimmered in the air and his gut clenched each time the wind blew a swathe close, he had to keep his breath one-two steady because the mask made it loud, obvious while the railroad spike stuck low in his skull. It wasn’t far but Rook sweated the whole cold way, ended up clammy under bliss and really,

fuck the bliss.

 _Fuck_ the bliss, fuck the thin green mist and fields of white flowers, the chlorine-sweet stink when they burned. Fuck the bliss, fuck the mask and his hands still _shaking_ —

One, two. Steady.

The Angels were too quiet. One had moaned with pain just once as they left the house – an older woman once but after that she was a husk with teeth stuck so hard into her bottom lip that blood seeped down her chin, and she moaned once but then she hadn’t made another fucking sound.

They passed the bridge and retrod his path back to the burnt camp. Faith’s painted peggies and Angels had swarmed over the remains of the camp to gnaw the bones clean, dozens or red-ruined milling under the watchful eyes of lucid peggies with guns and masks and naked necks. Rook wasn’t in a position to object so he kept walking, peggies parting before him (flesh against a knife) until they resettled behind him still and silent.

It wasn’t Jacob in the centre. It was Faith and her hands were out on her lightfooted way to meet him, brushing against some of the peggies she passed, touched bodies who sighed themselves empty afterwards. Rook came to a stop by a wide jeep fitted with a gun, a heavily tattooed woman perched atop it to keep watch and, “deputy,” Faith breathed, and she was just so small outside the bliss. Barely five-four and so goddamn _little_ , Rachel Jessop with her bird-thin wrists and her tattooed-over trackmarks. “You came for us,” she said, all innocent wonder, joy leaking out at the seams. The Angel behind her crooned to himself; a child fucking self-soothing, a low-grind of something tuneless and hands pressed over his ears, fingernails torn down to the quick and one shoulder hanging wrong.

Rook’s lips were numb with the snarl under the surface, with hyperventilating in a bliss-soaked house, but he replied, “I came for Jacob and Joseph,”

and Faith smiled, she beamed at him and moved on feet barely earth-bound to look at him closely. “I know but I had to see, I had to know for myself and it was just as He said!” She spun in place before she faced him again, rushed in close in air made sweet (just bitter at the edges). “You came back, you _came_!” She pressed a hand to his chest, Faith who’d been afraid and was so close then.

“I’m surprised you’re excited,” Rook told her and let her touch him (no sudden moves) while he touched Bear, felt an anchor of fur and bone. “Given what happened last time we met.”

Suddenly beseeching, she ducked for eye contact, a different angle to meet his eyes through the mask. “But things are different now, Rook – you’re _family_ now, just like Joseph said. And I didn’t _see_ ,” admitted in a rush, a flood of shame textured a little like heroin, a little like scopolamine, “I didn’t, but I do, I do now that you’re here, I promise.”

Rook kept stroking Bear’s ears, slow-steady like the pounding in his head. “I came because the US army is closing in on the county and the two of them got cornered. Same reason you did, nothing more.”

She laughed, head thrown back and the inside of her mouth dark, a flash of emptiness and teeth. “No, no, it’s a sign, don’t you see? That the broken can be made whole again, that with His grace our chosen can know our bliss!”

Rook paused. It ran again, a highlight reel.

Made whole. _Our_ bliss.

Made whole, made whole and Faith had clear fucking eyes, so clear and bright and Rook had murdered his way through an army of Bitten (Rook knew a slaughter _when he saw one_ ) but not Faith’s, not when he’d stepped into the river and come out screaming for death, he’d never looked her in the eyes.

 _Welcome to the bliss_ , only

“you’re Bitten,” Rook rasped. He could see it, he could _see_ them but there was no _mask_

and she’d been in the bliss _already_ , she’d been there enough to be afraid of him afterwards and the marks were _obvious_ whenever Faith turned her head, whenever her ashy brown hair slid over a shoulder. The Bites weren’t tattooed darker like the first Faith, like the one with dark hair and a missing persons report, but they were there. Faith, the Bitten goddamn anglerfish with her pale light in the dark, telling him,

“I thought I was alone. That my dreams were haunted by monsters, they _told_ me I was like the others, but I _wasn’t_.” She gripped his arms, small hands surprisingly strong, clear eyes so wide. “I was _Chosen_ ,” and Rook heard,

wanted

and he heard,

one in a million

and Rook could feel it rising, how realisation could taste like metal, could feel like a sharp pain (a burn turned freeze turned burn again) – how once the machine wheeled in, you knew your odds,

and so did everyone else.

“Your test was positive,” he heard himself say. “For a working bond.”

Faith nodded, hands leaving him to touch her own face. “But I was a merciless thing,” Faith whispered. “Our soulmates are God’s gift to us – His will that we be made whole. But I was weak, and afraid, and she wasn’t,” and how sometimes that could be enough. A gap made of _them_ and _us_ and _enough_ for hate to slip in between the intercostals and sit, low and heavy and squirming. “But she will come back,” she assured him. “She will see that I have changed, that I have been found worthy. That I can be _kind_. If I just follow the Path, she will come for me as _you_ did for my brothers.” She looked at him like he was the one not getting it and he _didn’t_ , not really. Rook wasn’t Chosen. He wasn’t one in a million. He’d had the Bites,

and nothing else.

Faith made a noise; Rook looked down and he was gripping her arm so tight her flesh was white around his fingers. Rook cleared his throat, said, “they see the Bites and they think you’re the same,” digging in until he felt bone creak, “they think you’ve found some kind of answer, that this cult somehow _cured_ you when you were _never_ one of us—”

the mounted gun moved and clicked. Rook stopped, breathing harsh.

“Herald!” someone called. “I see the convoy! They’re coming!”

Faith didn’t look away from Rook – he could see white all around her eyes, but she didn’t move. Not to run or flinch and with a gun pointed right at him, Rook wondered what it all what have been like if someone had heard Rachel rustling in the grass and just once thought _fox_ instead of _rabbit_.

The truck at the front of the pillar rolled swiftly over the bridge. Peggies spilled out of the way before it stopped in the middle of camp and the door opened. Jacob landed heavy then strode towards them, a fucking nightmare in fatigues and a black gas mask, the shock of red hair above it and the long rifle on his back. Faith broke Rook’s gaze. “Jacob!” she greeted, all widebright smile and not one step forward. Rook let go of her arm.

Jacob stopped in front of them. A beat, a breath, inhale scraped over charcoal before he tilted his head. “I’ll ask once,” Jacob said, voice rumble-rasp through the filter. “Did you know?”

Rook knew a lot of things. He knew not to waste a question, a breath, a what-if in the middle of the night but, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied.

Jacob reached up and cupped a hand over the back of Rook’s head; the straps pulled the mask tighter on Rook’s face. Jacob pulled him in close, that hand on the leather keeping the bliss out and Jacob’s grip heavy on the straps, on his too-thin skull and the throb-hurt headache underneath. “If that’s a lie,” Jacob told him, and he said nothing else but it was a complete sentence anyway.

Rook looked at him, but couldn’t see his eyes. Just black glass circles, his own mask reflected back at him. His eyes weren’t blue, blurred through plexiglass. They were nothing like Jacob’s, like John’s, like

“Where’s Joseph?” Rook asked, and the faithful milling around them ebbed. Faith stilled. “Where’s Joseph?” he repeated.

Jacob patted the back of his head and let him go. “We’re not talking about it here.”

“Why didn’t he come with you?” Faith asked, voice high. “Isn’t he here? Joseph!” Raising her voice didn’t get her an answer. It was just loud where the peggies had fallen silent. No one else got out of the trucks.

“Faith. Quiet,” Jacob ordered. She wasn’t.

“Has he been hurt? Did he stay behind – what’s _happened_ , Jacob? I don’t understand,” getting shrill enough that Rook felt it _again_ , something hidden under bliss twinged and he remembered her staggering back while Needles tried to push through it all, he saw her face as he’d screamed and it was the same.

The peggies were Faith’s peggies. Fear caught like tinder.

“The Father! The Father has gone—”

“The heathens _took_ him—”

“—the Sinner, the _Sinner_ —” and that was getting louder, rising like a heartrate around him.

“Did he say anything?” Rook pressed. “I can find him but I need _something_ ,” and Jacob didn’t answer, just took a step back and said,

“enough,” once. Low with his shoulders tense, his head tilted just-so and the peggies nearest to him startled and skittered back, shut their mouths but then Jacob said it again, “enough,” all mild-mannered malevolent and the silence spread out from him like a wave.

Rook had to stop and catch his breath before he spoke. Had to get the momentum to break the silence. “What do you know?” he asked.

Jacob waited until the peggies were still and watching him, took the time to scan slowly before he turned his attention back to Rook. He jerked his head back towards the bridge and Rook followed with Faith close behind, the three of them settled on the bridge while Jacob’s hunters kept rolling in in their trucks.

Jacob leaned against the railing and folded his arms. “There was a message,” He said finally. “The night before. It said Joseph knew how it would end and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Joe was gone by morning.”

“Who sent the message?”

Jacob looked at him. “Who do you think, Rook?” he replied and Rook bared his teeth (ripped the skin off his frustration),

“I don’t know, how the _fuck_ am I supposed to know—”

Jacob pushed forward, put a hand on his chest. “Don’t even fucking think about it,” he said. “Keep your head or lose it, _deputy_. Now tell me, _where the fuck is Palmer_ ,”

which didn’t make any sense because Eli was in the Whitetails, was the Whitetails. Rook’s brain had carved the county into sections and he couldn’t just shove Eli onto Joseph’s island, it took a second because, “Eli?” he asked incredulously. “ _Eli_ sent a message to Joseph? Eli wants to kill _you_ or die trying, he doesn’t give a shit about Joseph.”

Jacob’s fingers dug in. “ _Wrong_.” He shoved Rook back a step, followed to keep close. “You know Palmer, you know his toy army. I’ve been patient. I’ve let him play soldier in the woods and now I’m done. Tell me everything you know _now_ —” and Rook was shifting his weight low when Faith shoved her way between them.

“Stop it, stop it!” every muscle in her body stiff and _small_ and not _facing_ Rook, her back to him so she could face Jacob instead. “He’s your soulmate and he came for you, just like Joseph said!” Trembling down her every vertebrae and Rook just staring, she said, “Joseph knew he would find you, and now he can take us to Joseph! It was what was _seen_!” and Rook found himself nodding before he remembered he couldn’t, had to blink back pain so strong it made his mouth taste like pennies just to think of why.

“Well,” Jacob said eventually, looking at him over Faith’s head and tone gas-mask-unreadable. “Go on then, _deputy_ ,” before Rook heard a yell from the camp.

Rook turned and saw Bear barrel away from the woods in a thunderous sprint that had sent a peggie sprawling, almost trampling another. Not aiming for anyone but just _away_ towards the river and it made his gut lurch before there was a distant, single _bang_ that sent birds scattering over the distant trees and shot down Rook’s spine without his brain getting involved, just a red-white _flash_ made action and Rook grabbed Jacob’s arm and _hauled_ with everything he had because

bliss was poison. It was a little like heroin and a lot of white powder and more than anything else it was

            flammable.

 

 

-

 

 

The explosion took them over the railing and they hit the river together. The water crashed closed over their heads as an icy shock and it was shallow, so they hit the water and then Rook hit the riverbank with Jacob’s weight on top of him and they crushed the air out of him between in a flood of bubbles, his mask split and water flooded frigid down his throat and there was a _noise_ of the whole fucking world split open above them, everything was so bright for a flash while Rook’s legs kicked out and he choked on the Henbane and the water seething around him, scrabbled at his face and the strap around his neck and struggling until his head broke the surface. Rook gasped once (half-smoke) and was under again, Jacob’s weight an iron bar against his chest and his ribs had broken, the drag of the current and his own kicking, his goddamn breath made them knife into his lungs. Metal groaned from above and he heard a _crack!_ before something crashed down into the water, sent an enormous wave over his head and took him down again, tore Jacob away.

The surface of the river broke with debris showering down from the breaking bridge, metal crashing down hard and sharp and Rook looked up through it at a plummeting shadow, saw –

 

 

 

_and I saw and behold a **white horse**                 patient patient **patient** they don’t see they will see me they will_

_judge not lest ye be judged he **judges** us we left he left us hear me hear me they_

**_took_ ** _him_

_don’t hurt gentle gentle mine mine **ours** don’t_

“Rook,” Joseph said,

 

_don’t_

 

and he held out a hand

 

_leave_

 

and crumbled away.

 

 

 

_please._

 

 

 

-

 

 

Rook broke the surface, gasped in smoke and burnt-sugar stench and his head splitting down his spine. Water blurred his eyes but he’d lost him, he’s lost Jacob so he looked and he could hear screaming over the crackling of the fire, agony atop the hill before he saw a shape drifting heavy downstream. He threw himself into the current after it and his fingers grabbed a handful of clothes, turned over a floating peggie half-destroyed from burns that had taken their whole right side. He shoved them away in the water and then there was another, and another, an army of ruin floating downstream before he got his hands on an arm scarred and strong and finally Jacob, still but whole and enough for Rook to wrap his arms around.

Rook wheezed, tasted blood and silt and his feet scraped the river floor but he was useless, couldn’t get them under him with Jacob not moving, not _helping_. The river tried to suck him back down and he kept going because Rook Kept Going, it was what he did and he hauled Jacob’s limp body out of the river with him, had to shove him up out of the water and into the grass. Rook took a second to gasp, to press a hand to his ribs like that would fucking help, like his hand could press ribs whole and the air tasted like ash, smelt like burnt wire.

He pushed Jacob onto his side. His arm slid limply to rest on the ground next to him, hand open, and that was what did it. Jacob’s hand open and slack and Rook, breath catching again because he _looked_.

The mask had been knocked askew. Jacob had hit his head on the way down and blood, the river had plastered his hair to his scalp. Red, red and how the fire in the trees was picked up and broken by the water on his skin, broken into pieces and shining off his teeth under slack slips. All of it flickering and burning and Jacob not

anymore.

Not breathing. Chest still and water seeping off him, his heavy-still body and for a second it didn’t make sense. Rook just stared.

Jacob, Jacob, Jacob _not breathing_ and Rook heard his sharp raw noise only when it split out of him like a wound. He moved fast and automatic

( _he’s not breathing, son_ from Whitehorse while Staci played dead with a smirk, _ABCDE_ of resuscitation)

checked airway, arms out of the way

( _dead,_ the instructor said, moving Rook’s hands, _alive_ , _see how close the difference is_ )

and two breaths, thirty compressions with his elbows locked, one-twenty beats a minute and then check for breaths but it was _Jacob_ not breathing, it was Jacob’s chest heavy and solid and thirty compressions, two breaths against a slack mouth and Jacob not _breathing_. The fire crackled further up on the bank. The river rushed. Rook counted compressions, arms straight and Jacob’s sternum making a sickening crack and oh shit, what if he’d done it too hard (was _too much_ ) because he could barely feel his _arms_ and it was,

“Jacob,” Rook managed. His voice broke. Jacob was heavy and Rook couldn’t breathe, that weight was on his ribs and they stuck jagged into him, he couldn’t fill his fucking lungs against the points and it was getting harder, it was getting harder and harder and darker, Jacob was getting dark around the edges and further, further

away

and then someone surged into view, Faith in her white dress stained bloody and soaking fucking wet, she sank to her knees in the mud and put her hands over his, pressed down hard with her elbows locked just-so. Blood running down her neck and back from torn skin and jaw set, she took over and Rook gave Jacob a breath when she paused, one and then another and

Jacob jerked away, convulsed and rolled and vomited water, choked out gasping coughs and _moved_ , shuddering like Rook was shuddering, a tremor that built in his hands and reverberated down _down_ in his chest. “ _Fuck_ ,” Jacob groaned or Rook heard broken, rasped out and Rook tried to pat his back to help the coughing but found his hand clawed in Jacob’s shirt instead, his whole body shaking. He had to get the facts right - the bliss, the explosion, Eli in the woods but Jacob looked at him like he was fucking insane and Rook was saying it out loud but then he heard himself and he was saying it _all out loud_ , was pinning Jacob down half-drowned with that half-broken noise still coming out of him, spilling out like the river had because Jacob had stopped breathing and left Rook with his fucking body on the riverbank, thirty compressions and no goddamn breath left.

“Jacob,” Rook said and he couldn’t stop it, he didn’t recognise his own voice and he crushed Jacob to him hard enough to feel Jacob’s heartbeat in his fingers, until it came out of him in a broken sob. “Please, _please_ ,” on another goddamn riverbank and Jacob, not letting go then either and Rook _wanted_ – Jacob’s pulse under his hands and that terrifying fucking strength so he pushed to feel Jacob push back, to surge into him solid and physical and there. He pulled back enough to push at his shirt until he could press his palm to the wet skin of Jacob’s chest, feeling it rise and fall.

Jacob’s breath was coming in a pained rasp and it was a fucking struggle just to listen but he grabbed at Rook, water-weak and hands clumsy on his face until he got him close enough to press their foreheads together, rough palms too tight on his neck and jaw. “Brat,” Jacob forced out through a cough and Rook surged forward until he could taste his breath.

“You don’t get to leave me,” he told Jacob thickly. Felt his heart stutter under his palm. “You’re mine, you’re _ours_ ,” and Jacob made a low noise and held on tight enough to hurt.

 

 

 

The screams from on top of the hill stopped while they clung there. Dying gurgles cut off under the roar of the forest in flames. Rook’s breath was slowing by the time Bear hauled himself out of the water on the far bank and shook water out of his coat, and he pulled back too easily from Jacob’s grip, Jacob’s chest still wracked with coughs.

Faith lifted her head from her hands beside him. She’d been silent, but tears had run down her face.“We saved him.” Faith was smiling but her chin was wobbling, her eyes were too bright. “You pulled him to shore,” and

_because I drew him out of the water_

resolved quietly in the back of Rook’s mind, an itch he hadn’t known needed scratching. Rook looked at Jacob and he _knew_ , it came out of him in a sigh almost of relief and Jacob was watching him, saw it happen. Rook was already drawing away when Jacob shook his head,

“I know where he is,” Rook said and Jacob was getting more animated, was shifting like he was going to stand when he could barely fucking breathe, “I know where Eli and Joseph are.” Joseph had to be found. He had to be found before Eli got to him, before the soldiers, before the Seeds burned the entire valley down to prove a point and Rook had pulled Jacob out of the water,

but someone had pulled him out first.

Faith put her hand on Jacob’s chest to stop him but she was small and waterlogged, Jacob pushed forward and reached out to just miss Rook when he got to his feet and backed away, “don’t you fucking _dare_ ,” Jacob rasped with eyes wide and so blue, and Rook had to swallow hard against Jacob in the mud with blood down his face, swallowed hard to say,

“I’ll come back. I’ll bring him back, I promise,” and he ran, Jacob’s howl of rage echoing behind him.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am physically incapable of writing during the day and I've been working nights. There's a woman living nearby who walks her cat at 2am. Discovering a lot of things past midnight, here.
> 
> Everyone should know CPR.
> 
> Title from Smokestacks by Layla (this is a Shut Up And Post Chapter).


End file.
